


Real Men Don't Make Sandwiches

by anenglisheducation



Category: Dragon Ball
Genre: Gen, a story of sandwiches, also available on ff.net, and the feeling that everything's alright when really it isn't though really it kinda is, and worldbuilding, but mostly it isn't, but seriously there's a lot of sandwiches, two people who shouldn't be friends
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-11-07
Updated: 2018-09-23
Packaged: 2019-01-30 13:53:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 13
Words: 39,956
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12654849
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anenglisheducation/pseuds/anenglisheducation
Summary: How a well-constructed sandwich brings together two unlucky and unlikely souls: first Vegeta, the prince of a dead race who's bound himself to Earth for honor; the other Krillin, a lowly monk who just can't catch a break. A comedy. Maybe.Now on AO3. Obviously. Hi.





	1. Prologue - For the Second Time

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The following story takes place between Trunks' warning about world-destroying androids and the wrong two androids' arrival in South City. I originally started writing this story in late 2013 due to my natural draw towards "odd couple" friendships and the belief that, if forced to be in the same room on a consistent basis, Vegeta and Krillin could find themselves in the oddest friendship of all. 
> 
> The first third can be found on my account on ff.net; however, it has been often requested that I simultaneously post on AO3 as apparently this is where all the cool kids live now. (I'm old). As such, the AO3 account will be updated on a weekly basis until we catch up, then simultaneous posts will be made from there on out. So if you like what you see and are desperate for more, well, more exists for now - just, you know, leave a comment or something. After all, it's always nice to thank the lady that makes you sandwiches.
> 
> Enjoy.

PROLOGUE  
FOR THE SECOND TIME

  
If there’s one thing not many (living) people know about Prince Vegeta – and certainly wish they had when begging for their lives – is, while the Saiyan Prince judges the worthiness of a race first by its strongest warrior, its cuisine comes in a surprisingly close second. It’s a trait Vegeta picked up from Frieza when Vegeta was young, which is the reason why he doesn’t advertise it (or much else about himself) to anyone. The last two people to know about it were his former servants: Raditz, who only seemed to find it hilarious when the Prince was not around, said publicly that it was poetic to eat meals prepared by those they were about to massacre; while Nappa, thanks to his sometimes cultish loyalty to the crown, learned how to determine a good dish from a bad one through _smell._ Vegeta wouldn’t have believed it either if he hadn’t eaten the results.

Frieza knew too, but Vegeta’s never considered him a person, so it’s hard to include him. When Frieza learned about it, he had a feast prepared so he could bring King Cold by and how him just how “precious” his little Saiyan Prince was, pricking up Frieza’s eating habits as he had, but oh, don’t worry, this childish trait would be beaten out of him soon. Frieza would make a good soldier out of him even if his race couldn’t even survive a small meteorite.

This was around the time Vegeta started having vivid dreams of pinning Frieza’s against his throne suffocating him with balled-up fists of Volcor shit while screaming, “Oh look, the Great Lord Frieza sure likes _shanopa,_ doesn’t he? Isn’t he just PRECIOUS? Look at him just TAKING ALL THAT PRECIOUS _SHANOPA_ DOWN HIS PRECIOUS LITTLE THROAT! But don’t worry, Daddy, don’t worry. I’ll make a good little BITCH OUTTA HIM!”

Though these dreams were disturbing even by Vegeta’s standards, they made him love good food all the more.

Vegeta grew up though and realized in his early adolescence that killing Frieza with food was a really stupid idea, so he trained. Trained until his bones broke and his hands bled and his muscles ripped in two. He’d lock himself in the training room for days, sweating so much through the pain that his body stopped flushing out impurities and moved to water instead. And during those moments when he’d grasp for life and hang onto it only through pure force of will, he would see his mother swaying through the room, humming a melody he can’t remember that’s replaced with an increasingly loud and rampant white noise. He’d stumble after her, falling over himself to catch the shortness of her gown, but it always dissolved through his fingers; and then, just as he felt his final breath, she would whip around like the scythe of Death and engulf him in warmth. When he was younger, he’d give in and find himself in a healing tank days later with a carving for twelve course meals; but adolescence made his anger coat his veins like the stiffness of a new leather jacket, so he started pushing her away, wake up in the healing tank anyway, and later only eat raw meat so he could see the blood spill from his mouth, down his armor, and onto his lap and plate.

This hatred would consume him until the end of his days, and Frieza, who knew a wild animal when he saw one, sent him into the universe in the name of empirical expansion.

He was unstoppable. He never lost a fight. Not against those ingrates in the Northern Galaxies, anyway. He and his fellow Saiyans devoured entire worlds, preparing them with the blood of their inhabitants and the salt of their conquest, cooking them with the energy that dominated the Saiyans’ entire beings and made their muscles scream for more. But Vegeta’s gut burned just as much as his lust for blood, and to make their trips less routine, the Saiyans would sometimes kill enough people to attract the planet’s strongest warrior and eat really damn good food while they waited for them. Some planets had such delicacies that Vegeta would kill the warrior and bring Frieza the cook instead. Frieza would bitch and moan until he tasted the food, then quietly hurry the cook into the royal kitchen when no one was looking.

Those were the days when Vegeta felt an honest connection with his only subjects left, the two men who would (as far as he knew) help him restore the Saiyan throne someday. Vegeta had ill-formed plans once he surpassed the legend itself and became the Super Saiyan – plans that spanned far beyond any empire Cold had ever ruled or Frieza had ever grasped. But when engaged in combat day in and day out with these men, he became synonymous with them, their bid for glory the same heartbeat. It was only there that he felt in control of himself, even when he was doing Frieza’s bidding.

Vegeta has always been his own, though. The moment he learned of a tangible way to put Frieza and his family six feet under, he abandoned them. It was not honorable, but revenge this deep never can be. He grieved not for Raditz, his right-hand and confidant; nor Kakarot, the lost Saiyan child Vegeta admittedly cried over when he first learned of his continued existence and later whose cold, dead hands he planned to pry the Dragon Balls from; nor Nappa, who had cared for him since he was young, who loyalty some days was the only thing that reminded Vegeta that he was a prince at all, because Nappa was weak and had no place in Vegeta’s new world. Vegeta came to Earth to take and destroy, to leave the planet in a spiral of dust to signify his first victory as intergalactic warlord and self-made god.  

But here he is. On Earth. For a second time. Earth wasn’t supposed to exist for there to be a second time, but things never go as planned for Vegeta, which is something he only admits to himself late at night when the aches in his muscles make him blasphemous. He had been taken in like a wounded dog that had bit its owner but had not been put down out of pity. His pride had died here the moment Kakarot leapt from that fluffy yellow cloud (how embarrassing) and had downright _buried_ itself when he agreed to stay, but its rebirth mulls on this planet as all the same. Defeat Kakarot. Kill his weird friends. Make it so _something_ in the universe made sense again. They are even _helping_ him become stronger. The sheer insanity of this causes Vegeta to ponder more than he likes and makes his food not digest as well.

It’s because of all this that, when Vegeta truly meets Krillin for the first time, he doesn’t kill him on principle.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Sponsor:** The following chapter is brought to you by beginnings. Beginnings: The things that start the things that end the things that start.


	2. OKAY THEN

1 OKAY THEN

It starts as a search for the Briefs’ lunchtime cook who, over the course of the past few days, has become better at hiding from Vegeta than Vegeta is at finding him. Most humans, Vegeta’s learned, have such insignificant levels of  _ ki  _ that he finds himself confronting trees rather than people here at Capsule Corp., which annoys him to no end. Before being bound to Earth, Vegeta always had  _ some  _ underling forced to do his bidding, and it’s moments like these that he almost wishes he hadn’t killed Nappa. Almost.

It’s only been a week since the purple-haired Saiyan brought news of everyone’s death by strange robotic people, but Vegeta’s couldn’t care less. When they bust out of whatever contraption they’re being built in, Vegeta’ll crush ‘em before Kakarot can even power up. He has a reputation to regain, after all. (And yes, he does believe the Saiyan child because Vegeta’s culture was built on myths and prophecies, and the kid coming to warn them about such specific events is prophecy enough for him). No, he’s more concerned by Kakarot who, when he crashed back onto Earth, barely gave Vegeta more than a, ‘Hey, how are ya?’ before blasting off to prepare for the enemies he just heard about. Personally, Vegeta had never been more insulted in his life, and that’s saying something. So now he’s back to the whole locking-himself-in-the-training-room-for-days-at-a-time bit – only this time with no healing tank and apparently no fucking cook to fix him food.

Vegeta’s already wasted fifteen minutes looking for the guy. The Briefs have a formal kitchen that surely has cooks he could harass, but he and Bulma have somehow agreed that he should stay in the backside of the house where the servants’ old corridors are because Vegeta doesn’t want to deal with any humans he doesn’t have to while she doesn’t want to deal with him, so it works out. The place is now being used more as a guest wing anyway, often serving those at pool parties who need the bathroom or a quick bite to eat, but Bulma’s not much in the mood for pool parties these days, and Vegeta’s commandeered the area anyway. He’s eaten here since the day he arrived, and he’s too set in his way to change it.

He checks to make sure that the cook hasn’t buried himself in the coat closet again, but the guy’s not even pretending to be the vacuum cleaner this time around, so Vegeta decides it’s time to give up. Not because Vegeta can’t find him. Of course not. It’s just that he doesn’t consider the cook to be worth much of his time. That’s it.

So he makes his way back to the kitchen so he can lie in wait. He’s noticed over the past week that the workers have to sneak through this part of the mansion to access the side yard, so he should be able to snatch one and berate them until they at least give him a sandwich.

Instead, he walks into the kitchen and finds Krillin. He suddenly wishes he had spent more time looking for the cook.

Krillin’s smaller than he remembers and apparently  _ stupider  _ too because he’s using a stool to reach the upper cabinets rather than flying. The tropical shirt he’s wearing is insulting even to Vegeta and is the only reason Vegeta noticed him in the first place. The khaki shorts he has on are much too big and are hoisted up by a belt that looks like it fought about three hurricanes and lost. Vegeta doesn’t look much better – he might as well be wearing a Speedo.

“Oh, uh… hey,” Krillin says. While he’s definitely startled, he’s not as shocked as he should be. He goes back to savaging for ingredients as though Vegeta had never entered the room at all.

If there’s one thing Vegeta hates, it’s not being given his dues. When, over the course of their so-called relationship, had Vegeta turned from a fear-inspiring demigod to a person you ignore when they walk into a kitchen? Especially when it’s this idiot, who not so long ago couldn’t even speak Vegeta’s name without spitting up all over himself? If anything, the fact that Vegeta lives in  _ any kind of vicinity of him  _ should’ve inspired  _ more  _ fear, not less! What does Earth do to people? What has Earth done to him? Was Vegeta ever brought back to life at all? He’s starting to doubt it. Maybe he died on his way  _ to  _ Earth that first time. Or maybe he’s in a coma on Frieza Planet #Whatever and is making all of this up. He does have an overactive imagination, though usually it works more in his favor and lots of people he hates are dead. Like Krillin. This guy should be dead. So should Kakarot. And his mutt. And the woman who gave him that pink shirt to wear –

– you know what, Vegeta thinks, let’s kill him! Let’s see if this isn’t just another vivid dream. He disrespected me, even dream people don’t disrespect –

“Um… do you want a sandwich, or...?”

Vegeta blinks. What’s the idiot whining on about? Food? Oh. His stomach’s growling overcomes his sudden bloodlust, though not by much. He finds himself knocking back his usual seat at the kitchen’s murky blue table and drops himself into it. He waits, and when Krillin makes no move to make good on his promise, Vegeta says, “Well, what’re you waiting for?”

Krillin jumps (much better), and while he’s more finicky than he had been before, his search seems a lot more intentional as he tosses out ingredients and shoves them into order. Ignoring Krillin’s frantic search, Vegeta puts his cheek in his hand looks past the kitchen, through the sliding glass doors, and out to the pool he has zero desire to jump in. Now, what would be the best way to do this? A shot through the head? Efficient – satisfying even – but uninventive. Suffocation? Also efficient  –  _ really satisfying _ – but time-consuming. It would also require Vegeta to get up close and personal, which doesn’t exactly sound pleasant. It would be nice to literally strangle the life out of one of the major contributors to Vegeta’s recent streak of failures, though. Eh, he has a sandwich to scruff down before he has to decide. Drowning?

Meanwhile, Krillin prepares a sandwich he’s made a thousand times before.

It doesn’t look like much is what Vegeta thinks when it’s set down before him. It’s a mess of meats and cheeses that make it unnecessarily bulky like one of those sandwiches served in a café with the pick with the olive through it. Vegeta’s never been to a café on Earth, so he wouldn’t know. To him, it mostly look pathetic, as though the sandwich is ashamed of its own existence. Vegeta would be too. He decides he should put it out of its misery.

(By the way, Vegeta’s decided that a shot through the head’s sufficient because he doesn’t want to make it seem like Krillin’s inconvenienced him  _ that  _ much).

So he bites into the sandwich. More like shoves it into his mouth, really. No need to respect something so sloppily made, after all.

But then he tastes it. He doesn’t mean to – despite all those twelve course meals he’s had over the course of his life, Vegeta has also had his share of complete shit over the years and knows how to vacuum food when he needs to. But he chews, just a little, to help it go down easier. And it’s good. It’s really good. So good that he forgets just about everything that has ever made him angry. Earth? Fuck it. Frieza? Fuck him. Kakarot? Who the fuck’s he again? God, this sandwich is fantastic! Vegeta doesn’t know any of Earth’s animals, but he knows meat and now understands that Earth hosts some pretty tasty shit. Oh, and the human can cook. Isn’t that nice? Vegeta never thought he would find Krillin useful in any regard, but Vegeta’s found he can’t predict things accurately these days, so here we are.

Suddenly, shooting Krillin through the head seems like a lot more trouble than it’s worth.

As Vegeta downs his sandwich like a crazed animal, Krillin rushes to put his own sandwich together and get the hell out of the kitchen. It’s not necessarily because Vegeta showed up (though that  _ is  _ good enough reason); it’s just that Krillin’s had a strange,  _ strange  _ week since Goku crash-landed back on Earth and made a promise to himself that he would not allow it to get more out of hand.

But Vegeta has other plans. Mostly involving getting another sandwich.

So he snatches Krillin’s as he tries to pass. Vegeta’s owed the universe, but he accepts the sandwich. It’s a start.

Krillin meanwhile stares down at his plate as though his food spontaneously consumed itself while he hadn’t been looking. Goku had a tendency to ask for the first few of Krillin’s sandwiches whenever Krillin made them, but the point is he asked; Vegeta took this one like it was his birthright.

“Uh,” Krillin says.

“Another one,” Vegeta replies between bites.

Okay then.

Krillin drags himself back to the counter and proceeds to assemble a third sandwich to the rhythm of an upset stomach. He makes it and then another; and after pushing Vegeta’s across the table, he decides he might as well just sit down as leaving might prompt another theft and there isn’t exactly enough ingredients to make any more repeat orders. He finds himself thinking about licking his to claim it, but Vegeta probably wouldn’t understand what he was trying to do and Krillin hasn’t been a that much of a child in quite a while. He instead takes a tiny bite and, when Vegeta seems satisfied with or at least inattentive to Krillin’s action, settles a bit more contently in his chair.

Meanwhile, Vegeta’s just as enthralled with his current sandwich as he was with the other two prior. Okay, so there’s a light meat and a really good crunchy meat as well as what he thinks is cheese and a bunch of vegetables he doesn’t know the names of but plans on demanding answers about so he can force the missing cook to make him  _ so many more.  _ Or, he thinks, he could just forget about the cook and force  _ this  _ idiot to do it. 

His sandwich is soon gone though, and as the last bite slides down Vegeta’s throat, his mood goes with it. What was he doing before this? Killing Krillin? He’s there, sitting across from him, having only ate a very small portion of his sandwich and avoiding any and all eye contact. No, no, that’d been (temporarily) axed. Training to defeat Kakarot and restore sanity to the universe? Yeah, that sounds right.

Vegeta shoots up, startling Krillin as Vegeta can never do anything casually. “Have more in two hours,” he says.

“Uh–”

Vegeta leaves.

“Okay then?”

* * *

It’s two hours later, and the ache in Vegeta’s muscles allow him to let down his guard enough to admit to himself that he’s pleasantly surprised when he finds Krillin in the kitchen with six sandwiches already made. He’s at the counter preparing a seventh, but the way the others are presented and pushed towards Vegeta’s seat from before, it’s most likely for Krillin himself. He’s still standing on a stool to grab things for some reason, which annoys Vegeta greatly, but the moment Vegeta sits down and takes his first bite, nothing annoys him anymore. Krillin could  _ become  _ a stool for all he cares.

Krillin finishes making his sandwich and decides he might as well join Vegeta again. After all, he didn’t chop off Krillin’s head last time and partaking of food with the Saiyan Prince twice in one day seems to be the perfect punch line to his day, so if doing so will make today into a joke, Krillin’s willing to risk it. He takes a bite and soon the two are in this strange, somewhat awkward silence they had two hours ago, except it’s much longer because there’s six sandwiches to go through instead of three.

Until Vegeta, between his third and fourth sandwich, asks, “You live here or what?”

“What?” Krillin asks. “Oh, uh, yeah.” He’s startled and honestly surprised he’s having to answer anything. “Temporarily, anyway.”

He waits, sandwich in hand, for some kind of reply, but soon it’s apparent that Vegeta might as well have never asked the question at all. That’s because Vegeta’s all about the sandwiches again, so for a moment, Krillin thinks he might’ve imagined it. The silence is completely awkward now, though, and Krillin feels an intense need to fill it. “I, uh, actually live on an island usually,” he tells Vegeta. “With Goku and my martial arts teacher and a, uh, you know, turtle. Um, a turtle is an animal that has a shell and, uh, flippers and yeah. Oh, and a pig. You’re actually eating pig, um.”

Vegeta looks down at his fourth sandwich and with some interest says, “Pig,” before continuing to eat it.

Krillin finds himself more amused by the response than he should be. “Hah, yeah.” He settles a bit more in his seat. “Well, anyway, the pump that, you know, brings fresh water to the house? It broke the other night, so it’s gonna take some time to fix it. I’m staying here and all the people I mentioned, they’re,” (he becomes noticeably quieter, “all staying at Goku’s.”

He’s expecting the natural ‘Why aren’t you?’ to come and having to deal with that shit, but when Vegeta makes no move to reply, Krillin learns that he might like Vegeta much more than he thought.

Vegeta’s finishes pretty soon afterwards and shoves the plate back to Krillin, who’s barely touched his sandwich at all. He gets up to leave because god he needs a show, and on his way out of the kitchen says, “Seven tomorrow.”

Before Krillin can protest, he’s gone.

Okay then.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Sponsor:** The following chapter is brought to you by grimey kitchen counters. Grimey kitchen counters: The sticky, sticky surface that lets you know whether your roommate really cleaned the kitchen or not.


	3. THE PUNCHLINE

2 THE PUNCHLINE

 

It’s 7:15, and Vegeta’s having the best morning he’s had since the day he learned the Dragon Balls were a thing.  Even his morning regiment went better than usual, which admittedly isn’t that hard to accomplish seeing that it mainly consists of him punching equipment because he woke up not being Super Saiyan again, but still.  Oh, equipment was still punched (a lot), but this time he had something tangible to look forward to, which honestly is a welcomed change of pace. While chewing through his second sandwich, Vegeta wonders if he shouldn’t be more bothered by the truth of that statement, but after another bite, he delegates the thought to the back of his mind to be discussed later tonight once he’s in bed and can barely move.  Meanwhile, he’s going to enjoy these sandwiches for all they’re worth and once again visit the topic of what should be done with the human currently sitting across from him.

He still has no desire to kill Krillin (not yet, anyway), but Vegeta is unsure of how “make me sandwiches whenever I demand it” has translated to “join me while I’m eating them.”  Vegeta doesn’t want to go as far as to say he’s annoyed as that would be giving Krillin way more significance than he deserves, but it is a development that Vegeta can’t help but take notice of.  It’s less the fact that Krillin is in the same room, or that he’s eating the same thing at the same time even; it’s that he looks up every once and awhile as though he’s expecting something.  He’s even sitting here now, in a Hawaiian shirt he must’ve found at the bottom of a bargain bin at a gas station, staring at Vegeta as though Vegeta’s the one that’s bald and short and has no nose.  Vegeta makes eye contact only so Krillin will jump slightly for the third time this morning and go back to acting as though his half of a half of a sandwich is the most interesting thing in the room.  God, Vegeta thinks, he eats like a woman.

Three sandwiches of six down the hatch, and Krillin finally speaks up.  “Do you wanna, uh, maybe wrap your hands or… something?”

Vegeta looks down to find that his knuckles are bleeding.  They’ve been doing that a lot recently, mostly because of that whole equipment bashing bit I’ve been telling you about, specifically the gravity generator when it tells him that 300x Earth’s normal gravity is probably not a great idea. He once spent an hour trying to find the mute button, but of course it doesn’t have one when the woman who built it can barely mute herself.  He could ask her to install one, but he’s pretty sure that conversation would end with his fists in her face instead of the machine’s, and while a deep part of Vegeta wishes he was that vile, a deeper part of him knows you don’t punch your hostess, even if she does dress you in pink shirts and tells you that you smell whenever she sees you.

He grunts in reply and continues eating.

“Right,” Krillin says.  He puts down his tiny piece of sandwich as though it’s much too big to finish and takes a sip of his orange juice.  After a moment, Krillin asks, “So what exactly do you do in there?”

Well, after nearly murdering the gravity generator, Vegeta then finds that 300x Earth’s gravity is in fact  _ not _ a great idea, but his pride won’t let him admit it, so he tries to train anyway.  He’s usually on his third push up when he realizes that the pressure is actually going to  _ kill _ him, so he finds himself crawling back to the generator to adjust it to a more acceptable level while his bones are being crushed and his soul feels like its leaving his body.  Once he manages that, he proceeds to lie on the floor for a good five to ten minutes while screaming at the world at the top of his lungs. Then he remembers that this planet doesn’t acknowledge his complaints – otherwise it would’ve blown itself up by now – so he destroys everything he possibly can in the chamber without having to talk to Bulma afterwards. Then he gets hungry.

Vegeta sums it up as, “I train.”

“Well, yes,” Krillin replies as though he’s expecting a better answer.

Vegeta doesn’t have a better one to give.  He does, however, have a mouth that is very happy to eat another sandwich.

“Okay then.” Krillin folds his hands gently on the table and worries his fingers for a second, as though their movement will give him something to say.  

Vegeta’s tries to forget that Krillin’s there again, but that’s around the time Krillin’s eyes narrow and he’s looking almost angry. Suddenly, Krillin hits his hands against the table hard enough to make the plate of sandwiches jump and causes the last two to perform some impressive acrobatics for being sandwiches. “No, it’s not okay,” he says with some determination, though almost immediately afterwards he seems more surprised by the sandwiches’ sudden circus career than his resolution about anything. Vegeta meanwhile was about to take another bite out of his current sandwich and is now sitting there like an idiot with his mouth wide open and the non-acrobatic sandwich perched a bit too close to his lips not to be consumed.

Krillin gathers himself.  “I’ve decided re-recently that I’m going to be more. Assertive.”

Vegeta’s about to close his mouth to say something, but Krillin says rather curtly, “I know you don’t care.”

Oh, okay then.

“Apparently,” Krillin says, “dying twice is… interesting and reveals… information about people and things and yourself that you’d, well, not expect not to have to confront after you’ve  _ died  _ twice, but here I am, and really I should’ve seen much of it coming but–” Krillin shakes his head, as though getting out of a trace, and proceeds to give Vegeta more eye contact than Vegeta is comfortable with. “–the point is, I’ve had a very,  _ very _ strange week, Vegeta, and if I’m going to escape  _ anything about it  _ unscathed then I’m at least going to have to be in control of  _ something,  _ and – as crazy as it sounds – right now the closest thing to control I’m going to get is with  _ you _ because – and I know this is hard to believe – making  _ you  _ sandwiches is the least crazy thing about my life right now, and really that’s the punchline, so–”  Krillin once again looks like he is expecting something from Vegeta.

“And?”  he asks, sandwich still dangling there by his mouth.

Krillin flinches as though he had been expecting to be punched instead of verbally berated and thus had acted accordingly.  Vegeta had expected a punch too, but he’s way too confused about the turn in events that he’s forgotten about violence, which is usually how he solves all of his problems. It must be the sandwiches. Oh god. Vegeta tosses the one in his hand back on the plate as though it was the thing that was eating him.

“If I’m…” Krillin takes a deep breath as though he’s recovering his confidence and says, “If I’m going to be making you sandwiches, then I’d like something from you in return.”

The silence that enters the room is stunning.  

Vegeta starts laughing. He can’t help it. Krillin meanwhile flinches again like Vegeta should’ve punched him again. That makes Vegeta laugh harder. He’s the punchline?  _ Vegeta’s  _ the punch line? This guy’s the fucking punchline! What, being humiliated by a third-rate-Saiyan-human-monstrosity-giggling-machine and having vengeance taken away from him once only to end up on this armpit of a planet  _ again _ to gain at least a little honor back wasn’t punchline enough?  Oh no!  Now this –  _ this guy  _ – wants something from him for  _ making him sandwiches _ ? This is it, Vegeta thinks. This planet has officially made me go insane.  I have to kill everyone. It’s the only way.

Instead he keeps laughing.

“Who are you?” Vegeta finally asks, once he’s out of surprise and ready to teach the asshole across from him a lesson.

“I’m Krillin. Son Krillin. I think.” Krillin pauses, as though he suddenly realizes what Vegeta’s trying to say, and responds with much more concern, “I don’t know.  Someone stupid enough to demand something out of you, apparently.”

Vegeta puts his arm on the table and leans forward.  “You’re demanding?”

Krillin weighs his options. “… Yes?” he decides.

There’s a pregnant pause – long enough that Krillin thinking about flinching again since it might’ve saved him the last two times – but Vegeta just ends up laughing again, this time with his head buried in his arm.  This gives Krillin enough time to compose himself and say with some confidence, “I’m serious.”

Vegeta sits back up and, with one look at Krillin’s face, decides, Why not, let’s play. My whole life’s crazy anyway.  “What do you want from me?” he asks with some humor.

“I–”

“–I’m not training with–”

“–Oh god, no.”

Vegeta stares.

“I mean. I don’t want.” Krillin once again gathers himself. “Your hands look scary, and I’d rather not interfere. With that.”  He nods.

“Then what?”

“I…” He looks like he knows what he wants to say for a moment, but then it looks like he abandoned the thought and starts to laugh dejectedly. “You know, I haven’t the slightest–” Just before Vegeta has the chance to explode, Krillin stops and, with some interest, says, “Wait, because of recent – I’m interested in – you’re Saiyan, right?”

Vegeta’s never heard a stupider question in his life.

Before he can say  _ that,  _ Krillin says, “That was rhetorical.”

“Re-tor-a- _ what?” _

Krillin ignores him.  “I’d like to know more about Saiyans.  About you, I guess.”

Okay, just kidding.  _ This  _ apparently is the fucking punchline.

“So I make sandwiches, you answer questions? Sound… good, maybe?”

Vegeta, dumbstruck as he is, decides to allow his body to do whatever it sees fit.  Apparently it decides that retreat is the best option because before he knows it, he’s out the door.

Krillin’s left in the kitchen alone.  He’s reeling from what just happened too, but after a moment, he manages to call out, “Was that a yes?”

Vegeta returns to the kitchen only to grab the two remaining sandwiches.

"… Was  _ that  _ a yes?  Hello?”

And thus begins the weirdest series of meals the two will ever have.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Sponsor:** The following chapter is brought to you by knock-knock jokes. Knock-knock. Who’s there? Wanda. Wanda who? Wanda leave a review? You know you do!


	4. ALL SORTS OF PROBLEMS

3 ALL SORTS OF PROBLEMS

 

It’s only when Vegeta enters the kitchen again after hours of sweating and swearing does he realize the following two things: 1) yes, he did, in fact, have that really,  _ really  _ strange conversation with Krillin this morning; and 2) he had also apparently agreed to the demands made in that conversation the moment he had taken the sandwiches and fled instead of killing the guy outright like a respectable fucking Saiyan. He knows this because there are currently seven sandwiches on the table and Krillin is sitting across from them. Vegeta should be angrier about this except for  _ these  _ two things: 1) sweating and swearing takes a lot out of a person, even a respectable fucking Saiyan; and 2) he could really go for a sandwich right now.  And a third reason (sitting quietly in the back of Vegeta’s mind) is that – just as a respectable fucking Saiyan should’ve killed Krillin at the mere suggestion of compensation for  _ making Vegeta sandwiches  _ – a respectable fucking Saiyan also keeps his word, even if he accidentally gave it. By fleeing. Like a coward.

Could he really make any more mistakes on this planet? The answer has to be no. Sure, when he woke up this morning, he thought he had already hit rock bottom: prince of a dead race and one living idiot who couldn’t even avenge said dead race because of said living idiot, and is now living on this hunk of junk with a blue-haired know-it-all and apparently this asshole. Hell, he should’ve seen this going downhill the moment he caught his father being footstool for a  _ cat _ . That cat is the God of Destruction, but Jesus.  Where is that guy when you need him anyway? ‘Oh yeah, destroy this planet right here, would ya? Need to make way for an intergalactic highway or something shit.’ But no. While Vegeta had in fact hit rock bottom well before this, it is in the moment he is handed a shovel and told to keep digging. And dammit, his fucking respectable Saiyan pride makes him.

It is because of all of this that, with a huff fitting of his statue, Vegeta walks over to the table, roughly pulls out his chair, sits in it, but makes no move to eat the sandwiches. Instead, he waits a second for Krillin, and when the dolt doesn’t speak, he speaks for him:

“Well, what’re you waiting for? Get it over with. Now.”

Krillin’s sitting there in the same stupid Hawaiian shirt he had on this morning and looks just as confused about the arrangement as Vegeta. “You know you can  _ eat  _ during… it,” he finally replies. To be honest, he hadn’t expected Vegeta to come.To be honest, he thought he’d right now be dead.  

“I can’t until you…!” Is Vegeta actually explaining to Krillin how this is supposed to work? This was Krillin’s stupid idea! “You said it was a trade,” Vegeta tells him. “Me answering a stupid question for your stupid sandwiches. First the question, then the sandwiches.”

“It doesn’t really need to be that formal,” Krillin replies. “That’s just… awkward.”

Vegeta’s not having it.  “What do you want to know anyway? My favorite color?”

“… You have a favorite color?”

“No!”

“Then I don’t know. Maybe–”

“ _ You don’t know? _ ” Vegeta screams. He knows he really shouldn’t have had such high expectations, especially since less than two minutes ago he had walked in here thinking he had made the whole thing up; but the revelation that, after all these hours, Krillin has yet to come up with one  _ decent question  _ leaves him wanting to jump across the table and strangle the cueball until his head pops off. It’d be so easy; after all, Earthlings are so easy to kill that they really should just bleed confetti. The thought of that calms Vegeta down a bit, though only slightly since he’s now imaging Krillin’s neck spouting sprinkles for some reason, and Vegeta  _ hates  _ sprinkles.

“How?” he finally asks, unable to find words for just how freaking rock bottom of this is. “How do… humans like you even  _ speak,  _ I mean–”

“Wait, how  _ do  _ you understand me anyway?”

The question comes out of left field, but it’s simple and comfortable and  _ wait, he doesn’t know  _ so Vegeta answers before he can stop himself, “A chip in the brain.” Obviously.  

“Excuse me,  _ what?” _

Okay, so there were a few things Vegeta understood when he first decided to eat his own dignity to live on this possum carcass of a planet, and its embarrassing lack of technology was certainly one of them, but  _ really?  _ Due to his species being pretty much annihilated by a blast of energy Frieza affectionately called a meteorite to the general masses and Vegeta’s fucking face, Vegeta was shipped off early into the cosmos and as such as developed a surprising ability to appropriate to cultures quickly and effectively without too much personal loss; however, he know finds that he has actually become accustomed to the one culture he’s always loathed: Frieza’s. Even when prepping a backwater planet light years away from home fleet, Vegeta always had ties back to that which he understood (even if he did want to squeeze that understanding’s face until his eyes popped out). Now this understanding’s gone (thank god), but he’s left Vegeta entirely alone on a planet where their elite don’t even implant their soldiers with language chips meant to streamline imperial expansion. What do these people do?  _ Learn  _ other languages?  The culture shock hits him in his gut, and the only thing he can think to do to get it to go away is to grab a sandwich.  And then another. And then another.

While Vegeta’s having his… moment, Krillin is stumped on how to proceed. He decides it’s best to just state exactly what he’s thinking. “That gotta be the most  _ deus ex machina  _ thing I’ve ever heard of in my life.”

The phrasing and the delicious taste of sandwich in his mouth is enough to get Vegeta to reply with, “What? God from the machine?”

Krillin sits back in his seat with some surprise. “What?” he echoes. He furrows his brow for a moment then looks back at Vegeta confused. “ _ Deus ex machina  _ MEANS ‘god from the machine’, I didn’t actually say ‘god from the machine.’”

Even the sandwich isn’t helping with the annoyance that’s starting to boil in Vegeta’s stomach. “Would you stop repeating yourself and tell me what it means so I can eat my damn sandwiches in peace?”

Krillin immediately starts babbling. “It’s-uh, it’s a, uh, literary device used to, you know, solve a seemingly unsolvable conflict within a narrative? I mean, the translation of it means–” He stops himself, and after a moment spent in deep contemplation, he looks at Vegeta with an astronomical amount of disbelief and what seems to be, if Vegeta tilted his head to one side and actually paid attention, annoyance. “Is your chip seriously  _ translating  _ Latin?”

“The hell is Latin?”

“An ancient language nobody actually speaks anymore.”

Another weird pang in Vegeta’s stomach makes him take an even larger bite of his sandwich than what is apparently starting to become normal.  “Your planet has more than one language?” he gets out. 

“Doesn’t all civilized planets?”

"No! They get taken over like any respectable planet and then they speak just one.”

Krillin lifts an eyebrow.  “Yeah,” he says, “that’s not how Earth works.”

Oh god. Just where did Vegeta chain himself to? If Earth is considered backwater, it’s obviously the water from a puddle in the alleyway, not the grimy faucet in the storage room like all the other backwater places Vegeta’s been. The revelation makes him chew slowly, hoping that somehow giving the sandwich more respect will somehow make it erase his problems just as thoroughly as before.

Krillin’s not privy to any of these thoughts though, so he’s been talking the whole time, and apparently what he’s been saying is this: “Okay, well, at least it can’t do  _ everything.  _ I guess if it has to, it can exist within my reality. I mean, I suppose it’s more logical than weird space people somehow just knowing how to communicate in our language. At least it’s an  _ explanation.” _

Apparently chewing slower has in fact reminded Vegeta of just how good these sandwiches are (and how the subsequent conversation has overall been worth it), but it’s also making Krillin louder, which is the exact opposite of why he was trying to eat slower in the first place. He finishes his sandwich and takes off a half of the next.

Krillin meanwhile is still in his own little world. “What am I talking about?” he asks himself. “If fits  _ perfectly  _ within my reality. I mean, my reality already has magical beans that’ll heal most wounds upon consummation that are grown in a sky temple by a talking cat and a caveman name Yajirobe; and above  _ them’s  _ the god of our planet who can apparently grow or make or… somehow  _ put out  _ seven orange balls that apparently summon a giant, eternal dragon once an Earth year that’ll grant just about any wish you want, which really has just led to all  _ sorts  _ of problems and–”

“I need more sandwiches,” Vegeta blurts out.

“More? I made you seven.”

“ _ I need more! _ ”

“Okay, okay. Just – hang on.”  Krillin puts down his own sandwich, which he’s only taken two mice-sized bites out of mind you, and drags himself to the fridge to fetch the ingredients he had just spent time organizing very neatly within.

While he’s doing that, Vegeta’s trying to figure out what the hell he’s going to do. Again. Usually when he decides whether or not he’s going to kill someone, it sticks. At least for more than 24 hours, anyway, and the decisions he does change usually involves someone who’s a lot more… well, someone who’s just  _ a lot more _ , alright? What is this idiot even doing here anyway? Didn’t he mention something about staying with Kakarot? Why the hell is he not doing  _ that?  _ Vegeta almost opens his mouth to ask, but that would mean the two were having a mutual conversation, and Vegeta does  _ not  _ have mutual conversations. He has series of instances where he talks  _ at  _ people, not  _ with  _ them. Because that’s what royalty does – royalty talks  _ at  _ people. Especially the help. All of humanity, really, should be his help, and it’s about time they realized that.

No, Vegeta thinks, what until you’re Super Saiyan. Then you  _ can  _ kill someone by shoving tons of food in their mouth and it actually make sense.

Krillin finally makes his way back to the table with three more sandwiches stacked nicely on a new plate. He places it in front of Vegeta, takes the other one back to the sink, and doesn’t even bother to wash it. Instead, he comes back, grabs his own plate, and says, “I’ve decided in the last 24 hours that I’m, uh, only going to let my life become more bizarre in self-imposed increments, so I’ll see you tomorrow, alright?”

Before Vegeta can reply, Krillin says, “I’ll make sure there’s sandwiches out for dinner.”

Could this human possibly make less sense?  

“And, uh, thanks.”

Krillin’s gone before Vegeta can even register what happened, but what does he care? He’s got sandwiches to eat.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Sponsor:** The following chapter is brought to you by out-of-the-way tourist spots. Out-of-the-Way Tourist Spots: They’re almost always used for murder, so why don’t you go and try your hand at a few? Buh bye.


	5. CONTENT

4 CONTENT

 

Turns out Krillin was serious about only allow so much nonsense into his life at one time, so when Vegeta enters the kitchen for dinner, he spends it only with the eight sandwiches he found meticulously bundled in saran wrap. If Vegeta had ever done any sort of domestic chore (which he hasn’t) or ever even seen saran wrap before (which he also hasn’t), he would’ve had some idea of just how difficult this feat was however, he still would’ve had exactly zero appreciation for it and angrily torn at it anyway. This is the first time since his chance encounter with Krillin yesterday that he’s been able to enjoy these sandwiches in peace, and he does so gladly.

Despite his overall disposition, Vegeta is not entirely used to being alone. When he was at an age where his memories could in fact be just fabrications, he remembers guards outside his door and an elderly woman, uncommon in the castle, watching over him in quiet contemplation while he laid in a crib strong enough to withstand little Saiyan hands. And when he was five and had some independence while walking the halls of the castle he’d never truly learn, he remembers that… something trailed him, their steps in unison, but when he would turn around all he’d see was a flutter of a gown and pearly white teeth, grinning – something no one else seemed to see and something Vegeta learned very quickly he should probably never mention. Later, when he had been ‘voluntarily submitted’ to Frieza’s warship to be ‘trained in alternative combat techniques,’ he had Nappa ever present by his side saying things like, ‘Don’t worry, Your Grace, just a few more weeks, just a few more weeks, just a few more weeks.’ When those ‘few more weeks’ turned into ‘oh sorry, your birthright got conveniently destroyed by a meteorite,’ Vegeta found himself in the constant presence of either his men, Frieza, Frieza’s henchmen, or a lot of people he was allowed to take his anger out on. The only stretches of time in which he was truly alone generally fell into these three categories: 1) Going to or returning from a job – a journey he spent 95% of his time in a cold sleep and the other 5% complaining about recent events to anyone on the intercom who would listen; 2) training, where he’d usually imagine certain individuals were present so he could pretend to beat the everliving shit out of them and later become so encumbered due to lack of water and common sense that he might as well have been beating said shit out of himself; and 3) in bed, where a chorus of disembodied voices gather in his head, come to the consensus that they hate him, and proceed to act on it.

While Vegeta has always technically been alone for the last two, those demons have always kept him company, and as his father said only days before Vegeta never stepped foot on his planet again, a warrior’s demons are more real than his opponents, and a warrior only becomes stronger when he can fight his demons as though they are men. (Vegeta mostly only has shouting matches with his at the moment, though, so he’s not sure where that puts him).

The difference between those times and now, sitting here in silence munching on the single most ingenious food Vegeta’s ever tasted, is that his demons are strangely absent. They aren’t ones to take breaks or holidays or even breaths really, so it’s a new sensation in itself. During this time of utter bliss, Vegeta thinks of… well, pig. That’s what the idiot called it, right? Pig? And he said he lived with one? To what, eat it someday? … Earthlings sure are strange.

Instead of going through an inner tirade about just how strange they are, though, Vegeta lets the thought trail off with something almost like a dreamy sigh. He’s not sure if he’s ever actually allowed a thought to trail off before. They usually get lodged like fat in an already clogged artery, and no amount of lifestyle changes gets rid of them entirely.  No, this thought just kinda waddles on through, and Vegeta is more than content to let it go. That’s how Vegeta would describe himself right now, actually, if he had to use a word: content.

Vegeta has  _ this  _ thought just as he’s swallowing the last glorious bite of his last glorious sandwich, and the first thing the demons mention is, When have you ever been content, Vegeta? If Vegeta had another sandwich waiting for him, he possibly could’ve let this thought trail off too; but he doesn’t, so he thinks about it, and he thinks about it hard. Never, he concludes. I’ve never been content before in my life. Then how could a sandwich possibly make you think that way? the demons ask. Vegeta thinks hard about this too. Earthlings sure are strange, they remind him. Oh yeah, he replies, like it’s obvious.

It takes him a moment, but then he realizes, That damn mouth breather must’ve put something in them to pacify me because I want to kill his best friend! And this planet! And everything he loves!

The demons don’t reply. They usually don’t when they think he’s right.

Dammit, Vegeta thinks as he stands up and slams his chair so hard into the table that he manages to flip the entire thing but somehow not break any of it, This is what I get for trying to be tolerant of anything. I gotta kill that fucking monk.

It takes some time, some yelling, and some general clanging about for Vegeta to finally find him, but when he does, he’s kinda lost all steam. Okay, he knows the human is insignificant enough that Vegeta shouldn’t even be aware of his presence in the universe, but shouldn’t Vegeta be able to, I dunno,  _ sense him a little? _ Trees are nice and all if you’re canon fodder, but this is getting ridiculous. Even around the time Vegeta had somehow started to be able to sense  _ ki  _ without a radar, the monk had always had some kind of discernible presence. The search for him almost took a turn towards the eerie because there was a moment where Vegeta had wondered if Krillin had just disappeared in the night, and the feeling associated with it was negative, though he’s not entirely sure why.

He ends up finding him in a place Vegeta had been unaware existed. He hasn’t exactly bothered with a tour of the Briefs’ outwardly manageable but internally nightmarish compound, but even if he had, he has the feeling this is a place no one would’ve bothered to show him. It’s a section of the roof that for all intents and purposes should’ve been circular or at least  _ round  _ in some respect, but instead it looks like… well, not a shape at all, really. It’s almost as though someone destroyed it and thought, Screw it. Let’s jsut put… something there.

That’s kinda how Krillin looks too – like someone had just haphazardly dropped him off there like litter and no one had cared enough to pick him up. Vegeta shakes his head though, and on second glance, he looks more like… well, not a gargoyle since Vegeta has no idea what the hell those are, but some sort of statue that should’ve crumbled by now. Third glance, and maybe – just maybe – he looks… content, and that word’s enough to rile Vegeta back up again.

He takes one step, then two steps, points his finger like he should’ve done yesterday to blow this guy’s brains out, and ends up… tapping his shoulder instead? Not even the demons are quite sure how to respond, and the only thing Vegeta can come up with is, At least I tapped him very harshly.

Krillin’s at least someone jostled by the action, which interrupted his honestly not terribly productive meditation session during which he was most certainly not content. He sees the look of complete shock on Vegeta’s face and decides it’d be cruel not to humor him a bit. “Ow?” he asks.

Vegeta’s unable to answer.

“Um,” Krillin tries again. “Did-did you need something?”

Of all the questions and accusations stampeding through Vegeta’s mind at the moment, his mouth picks, “What is a  _ pig?” _

Vegeta’s somehow more surprised by the question than Krillin is. Krillin looks to the ground for a moment just to make sure he’s not still somehow meditating and got way,  _ way _ off track; but he's not, so he looks back up and says, “It’s-it’s an animal? With a snout?” When Vegeta doesn’t reply, Krillin continues with, “I think I, uh, mentioned that yesterday? You know, living with one?”

“Show me!”

“... What?”

Vegeta hoists Krillin up by the scruff of his oversized corduroy jacket and shoves him to his feet. “As the Prince of All Saiyans, I demand to see a pig!”

Krillin’s so confused by the request that he forgets to be, well, scared. “... That,” Krillin says more to himself than Vegeta, “might be the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard.”

“When a prince,” Vegeta says as though Krillin is a single cell organism that cannot even comprehend its own existence, “asks a…  _ you _ , you listen to him. This- _ this  _ is how the universe is supposed to work, do you understand me? Now show me a pig!”

* * *

“So that’s it? That’s a pig?”

“Yep.”

The two are standing in the Brief’s inner gardens with only Krillin’s cellphone’s flashlight to guide them.  It’s late enough now that not even the moon shining through the glass ceiling is much help, and the two became sidetrack several times by Krillin having to explain that dinosaurs and pigs are two entirely different kinds of animals and that he’s not sure why the Briefs would decide to house them together. But after making what Vegeta thought to be an incredibly accurate beeline through the brush, they stumbled upon a fattened pig sleeping halfway under a bush. Needless to say, Vegeta’s not impressed.

“It’s disgusting,” he says.

“Yep,” Krillin replies.

Vegeta tilts his head slightly to the right. “... Almost looks like Dodoria."

“Yep,” Krillin says again. “Except, you know, Dodoria was a lot uglier.”

“Yeah.”

The two stare down at the pig in quiet contemplation, Krillin’s cellphone’s light basking it in an unflattering glow. Vegeta asks, after a moment, “And these can’t mind control people?”

Krillin looks up at him. “What? No!” He looks back at the sleeping pile of lard. “I mean… I guess they did make people think that bacon milkshakes were a viable menu option there for a while,” (he looks back at Vegeta), “but other than that…”

The two stare for a little bit longer. “Did your planet have anything like this?” Krillin asks.

Vegeta looks down at Krillin, who’s still looking at the pig with some curiosity, and realizes that he should’ve just yelled at the demons like usual instead of actually acting on their hunch. It’s not that Krillin’s somehow managed to become slightly more interesting than anything else in this whole goddamn house – of course not! To suggest that would be… well, not how the universe is supposed to work. The reason is that even though Vegeta accidentally contracted himself to this arrangement thanks to his stupid honor, Krillin has only managed to ask ‘how do you talk’ and ‘does your planet have pigs’ over the last two meals. These are stupid questions which aren’t worth Vegeta’s breath, but do seem to be worth Krillin’s sandwiches. I’ve been looking at this all wrong, Vegeta tells the demons. The satisfaction of eating these sandwiches don’t distract me from my destiny; they show me how sweet my destiny will taste once it’s fulfilled. And those sandwiches are fucking ridiculous, Vegeta explains in not those exact words, but that’s basically the summary of his long-winded monologue about them.

The demons back off. After all, they love to see him suffer.

“We had,” Vegeta says slowly, refocusing on the pig, “common meat.”

“Common meat?” Krillin asks.

“If you heard, don’t repeat after me like you haven’t!” Vegeta huffs. “Yes, we had an animal called common meat. Like this is called pig, ours is called common meat.”

“... Yeah, pretty sure your chip’s doing that translating thing again.” A brief pause. “Whaddit look like?”

“... Uglier than Dodoria, that’s for sure.”

Krillin tsks. “Tough life.”

Vegeta shakes his head. “They helped sustain the lives of the most noble and strongest race to ever exist. They were weak, but their weakness was the backbone of our early society. We were…” Vegeta tries to find the right word, but it’s Saiyanish, so he says whatever the translator wants it to be: “Thankful for them even though they only existed to be eaten.”

“... I’m guessing no ‘common meat’ exists anymore?”

“No.”

Krillin turns around and points his flashlight towards the exit. “Too bad,” he says. “I woulda liked to taste it.” He thinks about that for a moment. “Er, maybe.”

Vegeta takes one last look at the pig sleeping under the bush, and after a moment, decides that it can live until it is meant to be eaten. He turns around and starts following Krillin out of the brush. “No,” he says, “you wouldn’t. They tasted terrible.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Sponsor:** The following chapter is brought to you by bacon milkshakes. Bacon Milkshakes: You know, I tried a milkshake with bacon in it once, and it was actually pretty good. Of course, it also had a lot of alcohol, which surely helped.


	6. LAST MAN'S MEAL

5 THE LAST MAN’S MEAL

 

“So,” Krillin says the next morning, wearing probably the stupidest bowtie the world has ever seen, "what exactly  _ did _ people eat on your planet?"

It’s early – much too early for sandwiches of any sort to be honest – but Vegeta’s sitting at the table about to take his first bite of his first sandwich and yada yada yada. Surely he’s on another internal tirade about how Earth makes no fucking sense, or about how much he fucking hates Kakarot, or how the monk keeps getting weirder and weirder, or how good these sandwiches taste and how odd all that is; but Vegeta has had these thoughts so often in the last few days that they’re all quickly muddling themselves and becoming a discombobulated mess. 

A few years ago, while Vegeta had been pressing his thumbs through the guy’s eye sockets for God’s sake, an oracle had suggested that Vegeta’s problem is that he fights venomously against everything the universe throws at him rather than treating it with the patience it deserves. Back then, Vegeta had figured this was the universe’s poor attempt to save itself from his wrath, so he not only did he kill a supposedly immortal oracle, but also managed to destroy the guy’s planet and everyone living on it twice over for good measure. (How that was even possible, of course, is a story for another time).  

Now thinking about it though, perhaps the guy had been right. Not in that Vegeta is an impatient little man more obsessed with what he thinks he should be rather than what he is and thus expects all those around him to intrinsically adhere to that or be destroyed.  Of course not.  

No, Vegeta thinks what the guy actually meant was that, by fighting everything in his way the moment the opportunity presents itself, Vegeta had never actually been able to  _ savor  _ the victory.  Either he won and immediately jumped into his next battle or lost and got so shitty about it that he immediately tried, tried again until he accomplished the former. This is the way Vegeta has lived most of his life, and up until recently, he had planned to keep it that way until there was nothing left to fight.  But then Earth, Namek, and Earth  _ again  _ happened, and well… he’s ready for a different approach. It will result in  _ a lot _ of violence, sure –  _ more  _ violence honestly if he gets his way – but this time he’s gonna work up to it.  You know, like a hunter tracks his prey by the small traces of blood it leaves as it stumbles through the forest before finally finding a meadow to die in.  Except with sandwiches. And a surprising lack of blood. And apparently this idiot sitting across from him. Maybe metal people?  Vegeta wasn’t sure if he wanted to actually wait  _ that  _ long yet, but hey, the longer the sweeter, right? 

So pretty much Vegeta decides to suck it up for once and, without a whole lot of hoopla, answer Krillin’s question. “As I said: common meat.”

“Well yeah,” Krillin replies, “but that’s not all you guys ate, right? I mean…” His inquisitive look quickly gives away to a skeptical one. “Wait… ‘common meat’ isn’t your term for, uh… Soylent Green, right?”  

“Soylent  _ what? _ ”

“Green. It’s not a real thing or anything, but it was foodstuff featured in some sci fi film a couple decades back.  Pretty much everyone in the world lived off this stuff called Soylent Green, right, but what nobody knows is that it’s, well…” He clears his throat. “People.”

“People?”

“Yeah. Like, you know… human beings. It was cannibalism.”

Vegeta contemplates this by taking another bite of his sandwich. The only thing this tells Krillin is that, no matter the answer, Vegeta doesn’t seem all that concerned about the accusation.

So Krillin tries to connect the dots for him. “So what I’m asking is… is common meat like Soylent Green?”

“What? No!”

Krillin lets out a sigh of relief. “Oh, thank–”

“The only time a Saiyan ate another Saiyan was for the Last Man’s Meal.”

Krillin nearly drops his sandwich. “ _ Excuse me? _ ”

It is at this moment when Vegeta realizes somewhere in the back of his head that he might be in for a deeper conversation than he bargained for, but Krillin had made a staggering amount of sandwiches this morning and was in fact trying to eat a whole one himself (which strangely wasn’t going well); and Vegeta, due to said staggering amount of sandwiches, was once again not thinking straight. So he went for it.

“It’s not that green stuff,” he says. “It’s rare.” He furrows his brow for a moment, trying to find the right word. “Sacred,” he finally replies. “Not many had to do it.”

Krillin has at this point set down his sandwich entirely. He probably won’t be picking it up again. So much for the whole sandwich. “So... what?” he says. “Was it like a ritual or…?”

“No, you idiot.” Vegeta has enough sandwiches in front of him that the words don’t come with much of a bite. Well, coming from him anyway. “We did not have big rituals that involved the eating of other Saiyans. That’s idiotic! What, that common here?”

The blush on Krillin’s face is so prominent it hides his  _ yuanfen.  _ “Well, I guess it  _ used  _ to be… kinda.”

Vegeta scoffs but, after taking another bite of his sandwich, continues. “The Last Man’s Meal,” he says, “is when the strongest warrior in a stranded troop prepares and eats the body of the second strongest.”

Krillin has now pushed his plate away entirely. “What... like the Donner Party…?”

When Vegeta made no move to ask what in the world that is, Krillin takes it upon himself to explain it anyway. “It’s the name of a group of pioneers who started eating one another to survive the winter in the mountains. The surviving members would eat those who died from sickness or starvation beforehand.”

“Nothing as  _ dishonorable  _ as that,” Vegeta says. He finishes his sandwich, grabs another one, and bites into it before continuing. If he actually cared, he would’ve been amazed that Krillin waited patiently for him. “It mostly happens when warriors were thought to be dead after a battle and left behind. They’d form a troop and attempt to make it back to base.”

“But Saiyan warriors are taught to fly, right? Wouldn’t that be fairly simple? Getting back to base?”

Vegeta takes a bite of his sandwich. “Not when base is on a different planet.”

Krillin’s face sinks. “Oh.”

“The Saiyan race labored for generations under King Cold’s rule. Most battles were fought to clear planets of life in order to be appropriated or sold, so the warriors were left with nothing. Most had to wait for ships to return, if they did at all. Most didn’t.”

“I… I see.”

“The weak would die off from sickness or starvation or what-have-you until it was only the strongest two warriors left. They’d fight, and whoever bit off a chunk of the other first would be permitted to eat him.”

Krillin looks like Vegeta just picked a turd out of his nose. “Permitted?” he managed.

“The Saiyan race is not so cowardly to eat what does not die by its own hands like you humans. It would be dishonorable to eat your comrades who did not duel. They are left to rot. They are not worthy of being eaten.”

“So lemme get this straight,” Krillin says. “Ton of guys are left on a planet because no one checked if they were alive. They all go searching for a way back to base even though there probably isn’t one, and there’s no food on the planet because the whole thing’s been wiped. Guys start dropping off one by one, but no one eats them ‘cause it’s not honorable or whatever. Last two guys fight to see who gets to eat the other one and determine that by trying to  _ take a bite outta each other? _ ”

"The duel ends when the strongest bites the chunk off. The weaker admits defeat and is eaten."

"Killed and then eaten," Krillin clarifies.

Vegeta stares him dead in the eye.

"Oh," Krillin says. " _ Wow. _ "

During the moment of awkward silence that ensues, Vegeta continues eating his sandwiches as though he has said nothing strange at all, and Krillin continues looking at him eating sandwiches as though Vegeta were actually eating limbs. Krillin’s able to disregard his disgust though because of his sudden alarming concern. “You, uh,” Krillin started. “You… you never had to, um…  _ do that _ … right?”

“Of course not!” Vegeta grumbles into his sandwich, “A Prince is never left behind, dead or alive.”

Krillin lets out the breath he had been holding. “Oh good.”

What Vegeta doesn’t mention, of course, is that Vegeta never had the chance to be left behind by Saiyan ships because he had never actually been on one. Saying you haven’t been on a vessel of war when you are the heir apparent however is deeply embarrassing, and anyway, Vegeta doesn’t owe Krillin shit.

“Okay, sooo question,” Krillin says. “Does anyone ever find this last person?”

“What?”

“Well, they’re all, like, abandoned, right? So most of ‘em die, the second to last guy is… apparently  _ eaten alive somehow _ , but where does that leave the last guy? I mean, even if he cooks the guy, he only has…  _ food  _ for a few days at most. So… what’s the point?”

“The point?” Vegeta asks. He’s as fine as he’s going to be with Krillin asking all these who, what, and how questions, but  _ why  _ questions? As the Prince of All Saiyans, Vegeta is not supposed to ask  _ why  _ traditions are in place; he’s simply supposed to uphold them. Mind you, he probably hasn’t done a great job of this seeing that he never had a place to really _ do _ so, but nevertheless, he’s not liking the line of questioning. Now, would he probably be angrier about this if he hadn’t been eating sandwiches? Probably. But since he’s in the happiest state he’s really ever been in while eating them, the anger manifests itself into confusion.

“Yeah,” Krillin replies. “Doesn’t the last guy die anyway?”

“Most of the time.”

“Then… how do you know they did that?”

“Did what?”

“This whole… process? How do you know the guy didn’t just eat everyone? Or… the whole troop ate whomever died, or…?” Krillin shrugs his shoulders slowly.

“That would be dishonorable,” Vegeta replies immediately.

“Well  _ sure,  _ to your society, but the Donner Party was in the exact same situation, right? Abandoned; far  _ away  _ from society. They were separated from it, so they didn’t act according to it.”

“It would be dishonorable,” Vegeta replies more slowly.

It’s in this moment that Krillin realizes that Vegeta might not be able to fully comprehend the question. “Oh,” he says. “Okay.” He tries to redirect the conversation before Vegeta decides punching something is a better use of his time than explaining occasional cannibalism. “You said most of the time…”

Vegeta finally takes a sip of orange juice. He decides it’s best to not show weakness in front of the monk instead of exclaiming about how fucking disgusting it is. “Honorably carrying out this duty is how Nappa became one of my father’s advisors.”

Krillin was finally taking a sip of his orange juice too and nearly spit it out at this statement. “ _ What? _ ” He slams the glass down, though not very hard. “That… that  _ guy  _ was…  _ really? _ ” He lets go of the glass just before he’s about to crack it and folds his hands together, worrying them. “I,” he starts, casting his eyes away, “I don’t think… he would’ve been a very good man for the job…”

Vegeta scowls. “Tell me about it.” He takes another bite of his sandwich. “He’s dumber than a dead battery. Didn’t even know how to feel pain when his tail was yanked on.”

“Oh yeah, that was annoying,” Krillin replies. “So… how’d they find him?”

“Apparently some Empire equipment was left there, so a ship had to go back. Dumb luck really. Seeing that he was from one of the noble families and had to be honored, we didn’t have much of a choice.” Vegeta slumps in his chair a little. “He was thrown at me the moment they got the opportunity.” 

“Wait, I thought you said he got the honor because he ate the guy.”

Vegeta tsks. 

“Huh,” Krillin says.

The story Vegeta remembers most vividly about Nappa is a strange one. It was only nights after the destruction of Planet Vegeta, when Frieza had flown his warship back to the HomeWorld where King Cold, back then seemingly terrified to leave the planet, had held a memorial for the fallen Saiyan king. To this day, Vegeta’s not sure if Cold actually knew what really happened to the planet – seeing that, despite the racial tensions that existed there, the Saiyan were simply too valuable to just cast aside so suddenly; but all the same, Gold held these events often to show his subjects he cared for them when Vegeta was sure he did not. (To be fair, Vegeta wouldn’t have given much of a shit in most instances either, but seeing as this instance particularly involved him, it made him hate Cold all the more). That was the same day Cold had given Frieza total reign of the young Saiyan Prince, and Vegeta wishes the act had made him more angry than terrified.

That night after training until he nearly coughed up his heart, he returned to the same room he had been sequestered in since the day of his bargaining, to sleep in the same bed he had already slept in far more than the one in his royal chambers in his royal castle on his royal planet, to behind his eyelids play the feeling he would still experience so vividly years afterwards of turning from Saiyan to hot matter to nothing like he should’ve with his father and the rest of his planet. And Nappa, ever diligent, would lay down on the floor by the side of his bed inside of returning to his closet-sized dorm next door. Vegeta had always told Nappa this was unwanted, but in a time where the two had not yet realized that another Saiyan lived, being close felt as necessary as breathing air. Vegeta knew Nappa would not sleep until he did. Failing to disappear into nothing, Vegeta turned back from hot matter to Saiyan, and he asked Nappa about the Last Man’s Meal.

“Her name was Keiru,” Nappa had told him. “She was a third-class from General Kabu’s troop.”

“A  _ third-class  _ warrior lasted that long?”

“... Yes.” 

Vegeta had tsked. “You must have been surrounded with them then.”

Nappa hadn’t reply.

“You fought?”

“Yes.”

“You bit her?”

“Yes.”

“Where?”

He remembers that Nappa had shifted a little, accidentally kneeing Vegeta’s bed though the touch was light. “Left side of her torso, my lord.” Vegeta had wondered if Nappa moved so he could show that part of his body to Vegeta even though it was so dark in the chamber that the two might as well be lost in the void.

“... Did she fight afterwards?”

“No.”

“Because she honored the tradition?”

“... Sure, my lord.”

It was only at night and times like this that Nappa had seemed to reflect on things rather than speak. Vegeta had always liked him more that way. The two had laid in silence for a while, staring into nothing.

Finally, the young Prince Vegeta had said, “We are the last two Saiyans.”

“Yes, my lord.”

“... and we are stranded.”

“... Yes, my lord. We are.”

They had never finished the conversation, and they had certainly never tried to eat one another throughout the years. It was only long after Vegeta hurled Nappa into the sky and killed him that Vegeta wonders if Nappa proved to be the better Saiyan despite his disgrace in that battle. After all, Nappa had participated in the Last Man’s Meal while Vegeta had ultimately shied away from it. But at the same time, he and Nappa had never truly been the last two Saiyans. Soon afterwards, they had found Raditz, who had returned from a mission confused and alone; and then of course Kakarot, slumbering on a faraway planet, unaware of his heritage for years.

Perhaps it was for the best though. Despite their class difference, Nappa seemed to truly respect Keiru while Vegeta had never truly respected Nappa. Hell, he had never even  _ liked  _ Nappa all that much and to this day does not remember him with much fondness. But most nights when Vegeta’s finally drifting to sleep, muscles being in pain along with his slowing heart, his mind likes to think that… something is down there sleeping by his side. It’d be weakness to admit it though, so Vegeta does not allow it to truly bring him any comfort.

What  _ does  _ bring him comfort is knowing that there will be a day where he will be able to explain this tradition to Kakarot and, in his rage, Kakarot will agree. He doesn’t exactly respect Kakarot either, but they are the last two Saiyans; he can feel it in his bones. And well, Princes must keep with traditions. 

In the meantime though, he has sandwiches to eat and training to almost die during. Now that the sandwiches are done, he’s kinda feeling the latter. But even before  _ that _ , he has something important to do. He stands up.

“That.” Vegeta points to his glass of orange juice. “Don’t serve me that anymore.”

“Oh,” Krillin says, looking at it. “Okay.”

Vegeta walks out of the kitchen.

He hears a somewhat alarmed voice trail him as he goes. “And ,uh, please don’t eat Goku! Thanks?”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Sponsor:** The following chapter is brought to you by traditions. Traditions: The things you keep on doing simply because they’ve always been done, but have they really?


	7. THE LEMONS LIFE GIVES YOU

6 THE LEMONS LIFE GIVES YOU

Vegeta walks into the kitchen around lunchtime to a strange sight. First of all, it seems as though Krillin has recovered rather quickly from their previous talk of cannibalism and is reading some sort of pamphlet. If Vegeta was actually versed in this world, he would’ve known that this pamphlet is in fact a play. What he  _ does  _ know is that Krillin's still wearing the dumbest bowtie to be stitched in all human history, but he has now accompanied it with thick-rimmed glasses, something Vegeta is fairly sure he doesn’t need. The sandwiches are there, sitting on the same platter as always, and if anything, Krillin has made more than he ever has before. If one can even call that strange, it’s a good strange, and Vegeta views it with the closest thing he can feel to fondness. 

No, the strange thing is that, right behind the platter, are six glasses, and these six glasses are filled with different liquids, most of which Vegeta has never seen before. Thankfully none of them contain the orange liquid he was so adverse to this morning.

“You said you didn’t like orange juice,” Krillin said, not looking up from his play, “so I figured we should find out what you  _ do  _ like.” 

Vegeta is a bit… disconcerted about Krillin’s nonchalantness. Part of the reason he told the human about the Last Man’s Meal was to, well, you know… shake him up a bit. The last thing Vegeta wants is for Krillin to feel  _ comfortable  _ with him because no mortal should ever truly feel comfortable with a Saiyan Prince, and if there's a mortal who should be, it's certainly not Krillin. But Krillin looks satisfied, almost like Vegeta has told him exactly what he wanted to hear, and Vegeta's not sure how he feels about this. 

On one hand, he once again reminds himself that Krillin’s questions have amounted to ‘how do you talk,’ ‘do you have something like pigs on your planet,’ and ‘what other things did Saiyans actually eat.’ If anything, Krillin’s next question will be about the drinks before them rather than something deep and something personal. But Vegeta had given something deep and something personal last time, now didn’t he? It was more about Nappa than himself, of course, but Nappa hadn’t had his own image since the moment he pledged himself to the young prince; rather, he had been an extension of the royal hand, and Vegeta had used him as such. Needed to eat? Nappa ate it first to make sure it wasn’t poisoned. Needed to sleep? Nappa became his eyes in the night. Needed to set an example of his cruelty? Nappa was thrown into the air, killed, and left behind with barely an afterthought.

Vegeta has no Nappa to taste the drinks before him now. Because, on the other hand, Krillin could’ve judged him, could’ve seen that Vegeta does indeed intend to eat Kakarot, and decide to take the coward’s way out by poisoning the drinks. What if Krillin is just as much an extension of Kakarot as Nappa was of Vegeta? 

Nah, that gives Kakarot way too much credit, and wouldn’t Krillin poison the sandwiches if that’s what he really wanted? Vegeta decides to push these thoughts out of his mind and sit his ass down to eat. 

“Water’s fine,” he tells Krillin, grabbing his first sandwich and taking his first bite. God, it’s as good as the last time, and the time before that, and the time before that. What before was paranoia is now humor. Who the fuck cares if Krillin means to poison him? At least he dies eating  _ this.  _

Krillin doesn’t look as gleeful. “Well yeah,” he says, finally looking up from his play, “but you can’t possibly want water all the time. I mean, you’re already having the same sandwiches over and over. We should at least get you something that’s not, you know… something you drink during training?”

“Is this my question?” Vegeta asks.

“What?”

“Don’t tell me you forgot. Answer for sandwiches, right?” Vegeta takes another bite and, with his mouth full, asks, “So, is this your question or not?”

“... S-Sure,” Krillin replies. He closes the play entirely and cradles it softly against his chest. “Why not.” He once again seems much more like the stupid monk Vegeta has seen before, and it makes Vegeta feel like he’s had the upperhand all along.

“Fine.” Vegeta shoves the rest of the sandwich in his mouth and chews, and while he’s sad he let a perfectly good one go to waste like this, he doesn’t want Krillin to think he savors them enough to actually stop eating one before testing out what has to be the mediocre drinks before him.

Once he’s swallowed the large lump, he takes one of the glasses near the middle and holds it in front of him, examining it. “What’s this one?” he asks.

“Lemonade,” Krillin tells him.

He swirls it a bit, watching the ice and the bits of lemon pulp intermingle with one another.  “Sounds poisonous.”

“Little kids sell this stuff on their front lawns,” Krillin says. “I’m pretty sure it won’t kill the Prince of All Saiyans”

Vegeta doesn’t appreciate Krillin’s sarcasm. Vegeta doesn’t appreciate it at all. In response, he proceeds to down the entire glass. It’s only when he’s on his last gulp that he realizes that he absolutely hates it.

“Why would you give me such a disgusting thing?” he asks, coughing and sticking out his tongue a bit to clear his mouth of the taste.

“Lemonade’s a pretty classic drink here on Earth,” Krillin replies. “Same with orange juice, actually.”

“Yet another thing Earth does horribly wrong,” Vegeta says. He reaches for what he believes is water in order to cleanse his palette, but halfway through downing that he realizes it burns almost just as much. “WHAT THE HELL IS THIS?”

“That’s… lemon-lime soda,” Krillin replies.

“WHY WOULD YOU PUT OUT TWO OF THE SAME THING?”

Krillin’s sitting back against his chair now and looking at Vegeta with the same expression he did last night when Vegeta insisted on meeting a pig. Thankfully Vegeta is once again too busy with his anger to notice. “They have, you know, the same base ingredient, I guess? But they’re different. Like,  _ really  _ different.” He tilts his body a bit to the left and looks straight at the two empty glasses. “Different colors, one’s  _ carbonated– _ ”

Vegeta slams his palms against the table hard enough that the liquids in the glasses jump along with the cups themselves and a few manage to even spill over a bit. The sandwiches simply hop. Krillin does too. “Never serve me this ‘lemon’ shit again!” Vegeta says. “Do you understand me?”

“Yes, I get it! Okay!”

Vegeta grabs his second sandwich as he sits back in his chair. “Good.”

“... You know,” Krillin says, grabbing the two empty glasses between his pointer and middle finger and moving them off to the side near him, “now thinking about it, Goku doesn’t like acidic drinks either. They ruin his appetite, which is… something.”

“Acid?” Vegeta says. He points to the two cups. “There was  _ acid  _ in there?” And they let children sell it on the streets? Perhaps humanity is more badass than he previously thought.

“What? No!” He falls back in his chair, finally allowing the play to flop onto his thigh rather than be cradled against his chest. He grabs onto the frames of his glasses and adjusts them. “So there’s, like, this scale, right? For liquids? And it’s numbered, so if you’re on the high end, the liquid’s basic, and if you’re on the low end, it’s acidic. Lemon juice is low on the scale, so… it’s acidic.”

“So it’s science,” Vegeta says.

“Yeah. It’s called pH.”

“Hm.” Vegeta contemplates this while he takes another bite of his sandwich and stares pointedly at the two empty glasses by Krillin’s side.

Krillin gives a sweet smile. “Here,” he says, reaching across the table to push one of the other glasses closer to Vegeta, “try this one. I think you might like it more.”

Vegeta takes the glass and observes the liquid with some uncertainty. “It doesn’t seem to have that ‘lemon’ in it…” The content is light like the other two and has ice just like them, but when Vegeta sniffs it, it’s familiar. “Tea?” he asks.

Krillin raises his eyebrows. “Yeah,” he says. “Green tea, actually.” He tilts his head a bit. “What, has Bulma given it to you before?”

“That woman hasn’t given me shit,” Vegeta replies. You know, other than a place to stay, a fully-equipped training room, and maybe a spaceship like Kakarot’s if he can manage to threaten her dad enough, but it’s not like Vegeta’s going to  _ admit  _ this. Certainly not  _ out loud.  _ Because, to be completely honest, Bulma’s probably already done more for him in a week’s time than Frieza had throughout Vegeta’s  _ lifetime,  _ and it’s difficult for Vegeta to wrap his head around that, especially when both he and Bulma are well aware of the fact that Vegeta laughed his ass off when one of his little green men hugged her boyfriend to death. And when the small clown blew himself up on Nappa’s back. Also that three-eyed guy because he lost his arm and that’s funny. The Namekian dying too was pretty hilarious because of how much Kakarot’s kid cried. Ah, the memories. If only Kakarot hadn’t showed up. Or existed. Vegeta might’ve actually enjoyed himself.

Vegeta takes another sip and notices that Krillin’s eyebrows are still up. He figures he should say something, otherwise god forbid he might be lectured on giving the woman some appreciation, and we can’t have that. “Every planet with at least some intelligent life has  _ tea _ ,” Vegeta tells him. “It’s damn leaves. How hard is that?”

“Not very, I guess,” Krillin replies. “I just figured that, I dunno…” He stops himself, face hardening for a moment as he looks away to process something. “Never mind.” He looks up again, and he’s back to being what seems to be genuinely inquisitive. “So do you like it?”

Vegeta looks at it. It’s a harder question than he thought. On one hand, yes. Yes, he does. Though he had never tasted tea leaves from Earth until now, the flavor reminds him of his few brushes against the market planets of Sector 4 during his rare offshore leaves. It’s not that Vegeta was never given time off; in fact, for being led by such an enormous prick, Frieza’s army had surprisingly good benefits, especially for its higher ranking officers. Most didn’t have any family to visit, mind you, seeing as Frieza and his associates have twitchy trigger fingers and, well… your family dying usually had something to do with you being recruited in the first place; but you see, the act of processing planets after their sentient-cleansing takes a lot more time than you’d expect. There’s cataloging it and, if it needs to be repurposed,  _ terraforming  _ it; then you gotta actually get loyal people there to govern it for you (if the planet’s being used for that sorta thing), and those loyal people need loyal (or at least very terrified) people to work under them, and yada yada yada. The point is, conquering planets and incorporating them in the Empire took time, and as such, new planets were not acquired with as much enthusiasm as advertised. This gave men like Vegeta a lot of downtime. Downtime Vegeta usually used to train himself into healing-tank stupors. Downtime most others, including Vegeta’s two Saiyan lackeys, used to get drunk.

The few times Vegeta did wander out into the sprawling markets though, he had felt oddly conflicted. A large part of him considered himself above the common squabble, of course. While visiting these planets, he encountered both beings with diseases far worse than leprosy and others with more material wealth than Vegeta’s father or his entire empire could have ever hoped to obtain; but he was above all that because he was Saiyan, and they were not; and as they say, there’s only two types of people, right? And yet the small part of him…? It didn’t want to  _ be  _ them. Oh god, no. But it did want… something from them. And he had never felt that something more than the one time he stopped at a ratty tea stall in one of the corner alleys. He’s still not sure  _ why _ he picked that particular place, seeing that all its stools had been grimy and, along with the great benefits, Frieza’s army also paid surprisingly well; but he had decided to sit on the grimy shit seat anyway and order a cup. The twelve-armed spider man with the intricately braided beard and impressive sideburns chatted endlessly while he steeped  his tea and spoke in a language that even Vegeta’s chip could barely discern. Vegeta had realized he made an mistake in not wearing his issued armor because otherwise the man wouldn’t have spoken at all.

But just as Vegeta took his first sip of mediocre  _ Guraran fefulle  _ tea, he saw a monkey tail flicker out from the back doorway. Before he could even think, Vegeta was back there, his chest so tight that he could’ve sworn his ribs were puncturing his heart, but all he saw was the man’s young daughter, who had yet to grow her hands and flesh, cleaning the dishes in the bathwater. His heart must’ve ruptured because he could feel the blood flooding his lungs and clogging his throat and making its way up through his cheeks until it turned his vision red.

Vegeta was so dismayed that he killed them both.

This was seven years before Raditz even mentioned that he once had a kid brother named Kakarot.

Vegeta doesn’t regret his actions. The girl was so sickly that it would’ve been surprising if she lasted the year, but Vegeta does not justify his actions in this way, so it’s not a thought he actually allows to pass through his head. But the girl  _ is  _ permanently lodged in there because Vegeta can’t take a single sip of  fucking tea without, for a moment, being back on that Sector 4 planet, sitting on that grimy stool, and catching that monkey tail flicker in his peripheral vision. The sandwiches dull it surprisingly, making it a black-and-white film instead of an out-of-body experience, and Vegeta is happy about this. They still don’t make it go away entirely though, and Vegeta would rather not interrupt his sandwich time with bad thoughts. Having Krillin around asking him questions is bad enough.

“No,” Vegeta replies. “Not that either.” He pushes the mostly-full glass towards the lemon ones like a disgusted child. Krillin hears the weird catch in his voice though yet knows better than to chase it.

So he says, “Here, let’s try something a bit different then.” While Vegeta grabs another sandwich and shoves it into his mouth, Krillin leans forward and gently pushes the glass with the darkest liquid towards Vegeta’s plate.

Vegeta gives the dark golden liquid a skeptical look. “What’s it called?” he asks, mouth so full of sandwich that he’s surprised the guy even understood.

“Apple cider,” Krillin replies.

Vegeta swallows and brings the glass up to his nose to give it a sniff. He probably should’ve done that in the first place with the other drinks, but hey, gotta learn sometime, right? He thinks all three probably smelled as horrible as they tasted. The cider though smells pleasant and almost sickeningly sweet. It makes sense the human would serve him something like this. He brings the glass to his lips and almost takes a sip, but–

“Just a sec,” Krillin says. “Can-Can I see the glass for a moment?”

Vegeta lowers the glass and gives him a look.

“Please?” Krillin says, reaching out for the glass.

Vegeta hands it to him.

Krillin tosses the play on the table and gets up from his chair, taking the glass with him over to the cupboard where he levitates just a bit to open the door and grab the first mug he can find. He tips both the THANK GOD IT’S FRIDAY mug and the glass enough so the cider flows smoothly from one container to the other, and he places the glass gently into the sink. Turning around to face Vegeta, he cups the mug with both hands, closes his eyes, and takes a deep breath.

After a second, he lets the breath out fairly quickly and crosses back to the table, handing Vegeta the mug with both hands and a smile. He sits after Vegeta takes it, taking the time to scoot his chair in again one jerk at a time, and Vegeta’s surprised to feel the warmth of the mug in his hands. He had not felt Krillin’s  _ ki  _ once.

Vegeta brings the cider up to his nose and takes another sniff. While the base smell remains unchanged, the warmth brings out the sheer intensity of it. He hesitantly takes a sip and apparently Krillin has managed to warm it perfectly because it’s fantastic. Not as good as the sandwiches, mind you, because nothing ever will be; but it doesn’t have the bitterness of the lemon poison or the flashbacks of the tea. It also has a lot more personality than water, which isn’t saying much, but it’s still a mini revelation to Vegeta, who wouldn’t know what personality meant if it hit him.

“Well?” Krillin asks, hands folded nicely on the table, head slightly tilted.

“... I suppose it’s fine,” Vegeta says, looking down at the liquid. “What’s it made out of?”

“Apples?” Krillin replies.

There’s enough of a pause there that Krillin realizes that Vegeta doesn’t understand what apples are, and soon he’s back with one from the fridge. “It’s a fruit,” Krillin tells him, holding the apple out for Vegeta to grab. “It grows from trees? I’m sure you’ve seen some in Bulma’s garden at some point. There’s tons of apple trees in there.”

Vegeta sips the cider again, making no attempt to examine the apple whatsoever. Krillin pulls back in his arm and sets the apple down next to his play. “Do you maybe wanna try the other two?” Krillin asks.

Vegeta eyeballs the last two glasses. One is full of a repulsive bright red liquid while the other is suspiciously clear. (Vegeta no longer trusts clear liquids). Krillin leans a bit on the table, pointing over the first one. “That’s punch. You-You might like it since it’s sweet like the cider,” he says. He looks down at it for a moment, brow furrowing, before sitting back fully in his chair and taking the punch with him. “Nevermind. I think it’s gonna be too sweet.”

“What’s that one?” Vegeta asks, pointing to the last glass.

“Uh… water,” Krillin replies. “I figured if you didn’t like anything, you’d just drink that.”

Vegeta grunts and starts in on his sandwiches again, every once and a hile thanking God it’s Wednesday by lifting his THANK GOD IT’S FRIDAY mug and taking a sip. Krillin meanwhile bundles himself up a bit more in his oversized burnt-orange cardigan and eyes the apple. He picks it up slowly and, after flipping it around in his hand a few times, takes a decent-sized bite. His first few chews go over fine, but as he continues his face scrunches up as though he is eating rubber. He places the perfectly ripe apple back on the table and struggles to swallow. For a second, he looks as though he’s going to be sick, but soon he just looks upset. He gives the apple his attention for a few seconds more, then he turns away from it and, curling himself up more in the chair, returns to his play. He sips the punch he took from Vegeta even less than Vegeta pays attention to the cider.

The two enjoy a fairly comfortable silence.

“Can I ask you something?” Krillin says as Vegeta finishes up his second to last sandwich.

“No,” Vegeta replies.

Krillin looks up from his play.

“You already asked me more than one thing,” Vegeta explains.

“Yeah,” Krillin says, “but they were related to the one thing.”

“Sandwiches for a question,” Vegeta says, getting up and grabbing his cup. He downs the rest of his cider (which actually isn’t much, but he wants to make a show of it) and, after tossing the mug back onto the table, grabs his last sandwich. “I don’t got to say anything after that.”

“... Okay. Y-You’re right.” If Vegeta even had an ounce of empathy in his body, he would’ve noticed that Krillin sounded especially desperate despite his agreement. Krillin has never been one to directly complain about personal relationships, especially ones with crazy mass-murdering cannibal people though, so he doesn’t say anything otherwise.

Vegeta takes the sandwich and leaves. Vegeta comes back that night to saran wrapped sandwiches again, and he eats them in as much peace as he can muster. It’s alright though. Krillin will be around for a long time to come. After all, it’s not like Vegeta will ever mistake him for having a monkey tail or anything.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Sponsor:** The following chapter is brought to you by pH. pH: the scientific measurement that lets you know whether your aqueous solution is hella basic or acidic enough to turn a man into Two Face.


	8. EQUIVALENT EXCHANGE

7 EQUIVALENT EXCHANGE

  
  


“So,” Krillin asks, not looking up from the morning paper, “what’s your full name anyway?”

It’s the next morning, and the two are sitting around in the kitchen doing what could now be considered a routine. Vegeta has way too many sandwiches in front of him for both the time of day and the mortal man, and Krillin has a cup of coffee (two spoons of sugar, a splash of cream) and that damn paper. Even now Vegeta can barely see Krillin, and this is  _ after  _ the human folded the thing down once, twice to even ask the question in the first place. This leads Vegeta to wonder just how stupid humans can be to still get their information from something so… physical; but as previously said, these thoughts get thrown into Vegeta’s thought dumpster for his demons to eat out of like a trough, and there’s really no way to sort the feed from the shit, so he starts in on his sandwiches instead.

“Full name?” he asks.

“Yeah,” Krillin replies, finally looking at him. “You know, like, uh…” He rolls his eyes up to think and then snaps the paper once when he looks back at Vegeta. “Okay, let’s say someone wanted to record your name in a history book, right? From what I gathered, there’s a lot of, um… ‘Vegetas’ flying around? You’d have to differentiate them  _ somehow _ , right?”

The sandwich in Vegeta’s mouth does not allow him to get  _ too  _ angry, but goddamn. “I know what a full name is,” he tells Krillin with his mouth halfway full. “Don’t explain things to me like a child.”

Krillin goes red. “S-Sorry, I – well, I...”

Vegeta ignores him. “Why do you wanna know anyway?” 

“Well,” Krillin says, “I guess the past few questions I’ve asked have been more geared specifically to this, uh… arrangement. Now that I know what you like food-wise and how we’re even, uh,  _ talking _ , I’d like to… start at the beginning, I guess? And, well…” He tilts his head a bit. “At least on Earth it’s strange to have multiple conversations and, well, I guess  _ fights _ with someone whose whole name you don’t even know, and–”

Vegeta looks unimpressed.

A beat, and Krillin leans back in his chair. “And well,” he says a lot lazier, “you’re a prince. You don’t want any of us  _ commoners  _ to be addressing you without at least knowing your whole title, right?”

Wow, Vegeta thinks, chewing slowly on his sandwich, that’s the first thing anyone’s said on this planet that’s made any sense. He should be suspicious of this since, as he just said, it pretty much goes against everything this planet stands; but if Vegeta’s one thing, it’s egoistic, and his attraction to validating his existence is like one dog’s need to smell another dog’s ass.

He swallows his sandwich and tries to play it off nonchalantly. “Well then, if you really must know,” he says, “I was referred to in court as Cucurbita Paaya Vegeta of Tribe Un Ookairani, Two-Hundred-and-Second of His Name; High Prince of All Saiyans; Heir to the Gut Blood of Rikaa the Destroyer; The Untrodden; Low Prince of the Cold Empire; and The Last Saiyan Son.” No one has spoken Vegeta’s full title in quite a while, Vegeta included, and while it has been even longer since the Saiyan Prince could say all this in Saiyanish, the words still feel odd on his now-translated tongue. It dampens the whole need to be respected, and he’s back to his original mood. He continues eating.

“... Wow,” Krillin says as Vegeta starts in on his second sandwich, “that’s, uh… way longer than I expected it to be.”

Vegeta grunts. “Shoulda heard Frieza’s or Cold’s,” he says. “Took twenty minutes to get through each at least, conceited bastards.” 

“Huh…” Krillin replies. He thinks for a moment, then neatly folds the rest of his paper and lays it next to his coffee. “So,” he asks, “is Vegeta, like, your given name or... have we all been calling you by, you know, your family name this whole time?”

“... What?”

For a moment Krillin’s nervous to go into his usual explanations in fear of offending Vegeta again, but he realizes he has for the most part been correct in giving them. “Okay, so… my name’s Krillin, right?” He motions with his right hand. “That’s my given name,” he tells Vegeta. “You know… what my parents named me when I was born. A family name,” (now with his left), “it’s… well, it’s how it sounds. It’s the name of your family. Mine’s Son, which is…” He looks sad for a moment. “Mine, I guess. Thus, I’m Son Krillin.”

Vegeta considers it. “... Both,” he finally replies. 

“Both?” Krillin chews on his bottom lip, then says, “That, uh… I’m not sure that makes any sense.”

Vegeta hadn’t been expecting to have to  _ explain  _ his name this morning or  _ any morning  _ really, but then again, the progression in conversation makes a lot more sense than Krillin just letting it go and allowing Vegeta to eat the rest of his sandwiches in silence, now doesn’t it? He decides to get it over with. “Cuburbita Paya Vegeta is my family name,” he tells him. “I was the heir apparent, so I was given the name Vegeta from my family name. Cuburbita Paya Vegeta is the name of my father, and his father, and all fathers in our Tribe before him.”

“Thus the whole ‘two-hundred-and-two’ thing,” says Krillin.

Vegeta hums in reply as he gets into the last bit of his sandwich.

“Huh.” Krillin taps his fingers on his knees as he tries to figure out exactly how the hell this naming thing works. “So… let’s say you had a brother. What would his name be?”

“The same,” Vegeta replies.

“But-But how would you tell the two apart?”

“He wouldn’t have the given name of Vegeta.”

“But his name would still be Cuburbita Paya Vegeta.”

“Yes.”

“Sister?”

Vegeta stares at him.

“ _ Really? _ ”

Vegeta starts in on his third sandwich.

Meanwhile, Krillin puts his elbows on the table and rubs his eyes. There’s bags under them, prominent ones that must’ve formed days before any kitchens or sandwiches or Vegetas. He rubs his whole face next and keeps his hands there to support his head. “Okay, okay, let’s just consider the brother again. Okay, so… if  _ his _ name’s the same as  _ your  _ name, but his given name  _ isn’t  _ Vegeta, what would it be?”

“Whatever my mother would’ve given him,” Vegeta replies. It comes out garbled because despite having a million titles, Vegeta is both a Saiyan and an asshole.

Krillin stares rather pointedly at the table as though it understood what was being said, and Vegeta appreciated the break in conversation. “So,” Krillin says, finally looking up at him after a minute or so, “would this brother be named something like Cuburbita Paya Vegeta Kakarot?” 

The question comes out of left field and causes Vegeta to nearly spit out his food. “WHAT?” he nearly screams. Had the sandwich not been in his mouth, he probably would’ve been across the table already strangling the living shit out of Krillin for even suggesting such a thing. Does he not even know what the name ‘Kakarot’  _ means?  _ To pair that name (even if it wasn’t associated with the summation of everything Vegeta hates in this universe) with any noble title would be… heresy? Blasphemy? Fucking stupidity? Vegeta’s chip can’t translate it correctly, but it’s something along those lines, and it seems like, for a moment, Vegeta’s intent to follow the oracle’s advice has been shot and killed at the starting line.

But then he sees that Krillin’s maintaining that unsettling amount of eye contact that he did on those first day of sandwiches, and Vegeta finds himself much more concerned with bracing himself for whatever the human’s gonna say next because the last time resulted in… well,  _ this.  _ The moment passes though, and Krillin’s back to being the idiot that Vegeta hates but can at least predict. “S-Sorry,” Krillin says under his breath. “I guess it’s, uh… the only other Saiyan name I really know.”

“You know two others!” Vegeta tells him.

Krillin now can’t look him in the eye to save his life. “I figured they’d make you angry too.”

Well, okay,  _ yeah,  _ they would’ve; but having Raditz and Nappa associated with his family name would’ve at least been  _ funny  _ on some demented level. At least Nappa came from a noble family, and Raditz? Well, the thought of him being a prince is funny enough that Vegeta used to actively laugh about it back in the day, but Kakarot? Well, in a way it’s  _ funnier  _ than his brother, but mostly in the way that also makes Vegeta want to tear out all of his hair and cry blood while screeching to all of the Old Gods to just take him and be done with it already. It’s a feeling Vegeta’s felt a lot recently, and he’d rather not have it be associated with the sandwiches.

He still likes his sandwiches though and, well, as it’s been said, he’s not going to shoot himself at the starting line when things can still come together so well at the finish. So he begrudgingly says, “You’re right about the order though.”

Krillin’s surprised they’re still talking. “What?” he asks.

“It would be Cuburbita Paya Vegeta BLAH.”

“Oh,” Krillin says. He looks down at the table again for a moment, but then back up at Vegeta with a look of both surprise and pride. “ _ Oh!  _ I got it! That’s what you mean by it being both a family and given name. Since you were first in line, you weren’t given a fourth name. They gave you the last part of your family name as your given name!”

“Wow,” Vegeta says sarcastically, “humans sure are smart.”

The smile on Krillin’s face says that he either didn’t get the joke or is proud enough of himself that he’s going to ignore Vegeta’s bullshit for a moment.

He does realize that Vegeta would happily let the conversation end here though and asks his next question quickly enough that it would be odd not to answer. He asks, “So what is the same with Goku’s family?” He bends forward so his hands can go further down the table towards the tray of sandwiches. “He and Raditz shared a long name like that, but since Raditz was the oldest, he took the last part of the family name?”

Vegeta can’t help but laugh at least a little at the question. The change in his demeanor obviously catches Krillin off-guard.  “Their family was third-class. They didn’t have a Tribe, let alone a full family name. They probably had one like,” (he waves Krillin off dismissively, “yours.”

“I see,” Krillin says, sitting back in his seat. He cocks his head a bit again. “What was it?”

Vegeta’s now the one that’s surprised. “... What?”

“Raditz and Goku’s family name. What was it?”

… There’s no reason for Vegeta to be embarrassed. Up until a moment ago, it was never information Vegeta felt like he needed. He knew Raditz was well as he could, of course. (Kakarot is inconsequential in the question). Though certainly not as strong, his number three was a good deal more capable than his number two Nappa in a lot of areas, something Vegeta does not find particularly surprising but he still feels worth noting. He had… hair. And a tail. And other features. During their training sessions together on the main ship, he never held back against his Prince, something Vegeta respected; never waxed poetics of home, something Vegeta  _ sometimes  _ respected when he didn’t think his poor heart could take it; banged every willing body from boon country to HomeWorld, something that annoyed Vegeta greatly; and went to a backwater world in search of his brother and ended up finding a hole in his chest and Vegeta’s destiny instead, something that Vegeta either wants to promote him for or kill him for all over again. (Probably both).

The point is that Raditz has always been ‘Raditz,’ ‘you there,’ or ‘you fucking idiot’ to Vegeta, not anyone who would have a family name. Vegeta tells Krillin as much.

“Oh, I… I see,” Krillin says. He looks Vegeta up and down like he’s a different person than the one who ordered most of his friends to death, nearly killed Krillin himself on several different occasions, and is now obsessed enough with his sandwiches to demand his presence here. He looks… almost sad. “I guess I just, uh… you know, figured that since Goku and Raditz were two of the last members of your race, and they were brothers, that you’d… you’d at least know their family name, right? No matter what class they are or were or whatever.”

… As we’ve already said, there is no need for Vegeta to feel embarrassed. Saiyan Princes do not feel embarrassed. The closest emotion they feel to embarrassment is annoyance. He starts in on his fourth sandwich.

Krillin realizes he’s not going to get anything more out of Vegeta on the topic and moves on. “So two-hundred-and-second of his name, huh? Had your family always ruled the Saiyans?”

Vegeta’s more comfortable with this subject. “No,” he says. “But we ruled them best. There was one major family before ours. They ruled for 107 kings while Tribe Un Ookairani ruled for 72.”

“That’s a long time,” Krillin comments. “I’m, uh… kinda surprised, I guess?” He rolls his shoulders in what could be seen as a shrug. “I figured with, well… how you’ve described Saiyans and from what I’ve seen that… kings and families would be disposed fairly often, I suppose.”

“Taking the throne required much more than simply killing the king,” Vegeta tells him. “If that was all that was required, the Saiyan race would’ve been dead before it even began.”

“Well, okay. What were the requirements then?”

It is at this point that Vegeta realizes he’s answering way too many questions again, and when he looks down at how many sandwiches he has to go before returning to the training chamber satisfied, he figures out the little shit’s been making way more of them on purpose. On one hand, he can’t argue against the method since, hey, the more sandwiches the better; but on the other,  _ how dare him.  _ It makes Vegeta feel like he’s not in control of the situation (he’s not), and that really bothers him. Perhaps he should just take the plate, storm out of the kitchen, and finish eating them in the chamber; but that would show Vegeta was bothered, and while he is, he can’t let  _ Krillin  _ know that. It might make the behavior stop, sure, but knowing that he got the upper hand on Vegeta would make Krillin think he won and, well… Vegeta’s a sore, sore loser. Staying here and answering another dozen questions isn’t exactly winning either, but Vegeta does get sandwiches for doing so, and Vegeta’s always been a hungry, hunger loser as well. Think of it this way, his demons (muted from the sandwiches but present due to the course of the conversation) say. If you cozy up to him before you kill him, you can throw his corpse at Kakarot while there’s still a smile on it. Wouldn’t that be nice?

Yes, Vegeta thinks. Yes, it would.

Krillin meanwhile ignores the break in conversation and takes a sip of his coffee. He cringes, takes the cup in both hands, and heats it back up enough that steam’s rising from it again. Vegeta’s still greatly bothered that he cannot sense the action or Krillin for that matter whatsoever. Krillin doesn’t notice the look on the Saiyan’s face as he takes a sip and, while not joyous, seems satisfied with the taste now. Vegeta grunts and takes a sip of his still decently warm apple cider.

“It’s a matter of Tribe,” Vegeta finally replies.

Without skipping a beat, Krillin asks, “What do you mean?”

“If you want to assume the throne, you have risk your whole Tribe. To take the throne with honor requires a…” Vegeta wonders if the word will come out in his native tongue if humanity has something at least somewhat similar (but how could they?). “... an honorable duel of equivalent exchange.” Vegeta cringes at how it sounds.

Krillin catches the weird translation but doesn’t comment.

Vegeta continues. “The king and the challenger fight in the Ring of Ascension, and the heads of the Tribes come as witnesses. If the king loses, he is killed and his Tribe loses the throne and is disgraced. If the challenger loses… his Tribe is killed.”

This makes Krillin almost drop his mug. “Killed?” he asks. “The whole  _ Tribe?” _

Vegeta takes a bit of his sandwich and nods.

“Well… how many people are usually in a Tribe then?”

“Family?” Vegeta says. “Anywhere from 50 to 500. Warriors serving the family? Usually in the thousands, if not more.”

Krillin holds his mug fairly close to his chest. “And they’re just… killed? Like that?”

“Many commit suicide, especially the family, but yeah.”

The human sinks in his chair and stares into the steam still coming from his coffee. “Oh, that’s… that’s an awful lot to risk, don’t you think?”

Vegeta shrugs his shoulders as he finishes his bite and swallows. “If as the head of your Tribe you believe you can defeat the king, then it is your duty to do so. The Saiyans should be ruled by the strongest Tribe. If one can defeat them so easily, they do not deserve the throne.”

“So did your ancestor challenge this other Tribe then?”

“No,” Vegeta replies. “We challenged the Tribe who challenged the Tribe who challenged them.”

“Huh…” Krillin stares off into the space of the table as he adjusts himself back in his chair. “How many tribes were there in total?”

“Back then? 312. When I was born? 52. It had been 52 for generations and generations though.” Before Krillin has to prompt Vegeta to keep going, Vegeta’s explaining. “A Saiyan King must always accept a challenge to duel. To not shows you’re weak and unfit to rule. While your Tribe might maintain the throne, the king would not maintain his life. He’d be assassinated in his sleep.”

“Harsh,” Krillin says.

“Necessary,” Vegeta replies. After a moment, “Tribe Zu Radicchio, the Tribe of 172 Kings, was overthrown when Tribe Ra Seebeet’s head learned their current king was ill before his heir did. Under normal circumstances, the king would’ve been killed by his heir before a challenge could be brought, but… Tribe Ra Seebeet was able to take control easily.” Vegeta takes another sip of his cider. “Tribe Ra Seebeet was weak, however. They won by circumstance, not strength. The other Tribes did not like that.”

“Because it wasn’t honorable?” Krillin asks.

“It was honorable,” Vegeta tells him. “They went about it in the honorable way. The king was not fit to rule, and the head of Tribe Ra Seebeet technically performed his duty. After all, a true warrior does not discredit opportunity, not that you’d understand that.” (Vegeta doesn’t notice Krillin roll his eyes). “If Ra Seebeet hadn’t taken the chance, another Tribe would’ve. But for this tribe to be the one with the opportunity? That was the issue.”

Krillin sets down his cup. “I’m guessing they were challenged soon after then?”

“Immediately. Tribe Tab Porro was on the throne within the week. They would’ve been the most likely to succeed in a true duel with Zu Radicchio. It wouldn’t have done them well politically to take the shot against their weaken king, however, since it would’ve shown they did not think they could win otherwise. They let Ra Seebeet make that mistake instead.”

“So how did your Tribe assume power from them then?”

Vegeta pauses. He’s not sure why he didn’t think the conversation would go in this direction once he started speaking Tribes, but the sandwiches must be dulling his sense. He tries to say the answer in the way that would save the most face. “In a… different way that was… still honorable.” He coughs.

Needless to say, Krillin’s skeptical. “Not through a duel?” he more says than asks.

“... Yes and no.”

Vegeta realizes that Krillin’s looking for more than a vague answer and rolls his eyes. “King Poireau Sou Vegeta of Tribe Tab Porro, Fifty-Second of His Name, was the first Saiyan King to be approached by King Cold.”

Krillin’s now leaning over the table to get as close to Vegeta as he can while still sitting. “ _ That was 73 kings ago! _ ”

“Yeah,” Vegeta says. “No shit.”

“How long does Frieza’s race live for?!”

“More than 73 kings apparently. They’re like cockroaches.” Vegeta picks up a sandwich and pretty much shoves the whole thing in his mouth.

The comment dulls Krillin’s surprise a bit and turns it more into confusion. “Wait,” he says. “You know what cockroaches are?”

“Every planet has cockroaches,” Vegeta replies with a mouth full of sandwich.

“Oh.”

Once he’s swallowed, he says, “He didn’t have the title of King Cold back then. Didn’t even have the planet trade then, let alone an Empire. Just a few civilizations under his father’s belt.” 

“So this wasn’t when Planet Vegeta was… appropriated,” Krillin says.

“No.” Vegeta puts his elbow on the table and leans his cheek on his fist. “That wouldn’t be for many kings to come; however, King Vegeta LII of Tribe Tab Porro made a fatal mistake. He sparred with Cold, lost, and allowed the bastard to leave the planet.”

Krillin taps his thumbs against the table in unison. “Well,” he says, “I guess I can see how that screwed everything up in the future, but… there was no way to know that then, right?”

“No. Believe me, had we, we would’ve followed him into deep space and tried to rip his heart out. The point was that someone who was not Saiyan defeated the heir to Rikaa’s Gut Blood and lived to tell the tale. Our pride was shattered. The king had to go.”

“Not gonna lie,” Krillin says, “but that whole ‘gut blood’ thing is freaking me out. What’s that about?”

This could’ve been a breaking point from his family’s… hiccup since getting into anything involving the Gut Blood would’ve made the human forget all conversations before it, but there are some things that are too Saiyan to tell. Not even Frieza had been able to grasp the idea of the Gut Blood, and it was one of the aspects of Saiyan culture that terrified him. The human’s even less deserving of the knowledge and even less likely to understand it, and that’s saying something. Vegeta comes off harsh. “Want me to finish explaining what I’m explaining or take the sandwiches and go?”

The sudden aggression throws Krillin for a loop. “... The-The former?” he asks. “Please?”

And just like that, control’s restored. Vegeta’s not sure what he was worried about. He figures though that he’ll probably need to continue as he said instead of leaving anyway or else there’d be no more sandwiches, so he does. “My first ancestor who was king led a… rebellion of sorts once the Tribes heard of the king’s disgrace. They killed his entire Tribe before challenging him.”

Already reeling from the change in Vegeta’s demeanor upon hearing this, Krillin now looks like a gaping fish. Vegeta finds it pretty amusing. He sips his cider as smugly as someone sipping cider can.

“... But,” Krillin says, voice quiet, “wasn’t his family going to be killed anyway if he lost the duel to your Tribe?”

“No,” Vegeta replies amused. “Dishonored. Losing the throne is much more of a humiliation than wiping your entire family off the map. But this king disgraced all Saiyans. Him and his tribe deserved death after their dishonor.” 

“So… the other Tribes? They just went in and… killed everyone? This king didn’t try to stop it at all?” Krillin’s hands are back in his lap now and, for someone already so small, he’s doing a great job at making himself look even smaller.

“It’s said he went on holiday to heal. His immediate family went with him, and he asked not to be disturbed.” A smirk forms on Vegeta’s face. “He wasn’t. When he turned though, the first king of my Tribe brought his best men and they killed his three wives, seven daughters, and two sons before he was challenged.” He lets out a laugh. “The coward killed himself before the duel even began. Pathetic.”

“Oh,” Krillin says.

They’re quiet for a few minutes. At first Vegeta thinks Krillin’s just pausing to process what has been said because humans could not possibly understand what true Saiyan honor is, but when Krillin makes no move to respond, Vegeta figures the conversation is over. He happily begins in on his next sandwich and, more out of amusement than anything, decides to watch Krillin as he does so. He wonders if he replicates the stare Krillin had given him earlier if it would convince the human to stop his questioning entirely. He’d just start leaving the sandwiches in saran wrap like he had the past two nights and maybe even go cry his way home to Kakarot. No, no, the latter would make the sandwiches stop entirely. The saran wrap sounds good. That stuff only mildly pisses him off.

He never gets the chance though because Krillin never looks up. Instead, he’s using a small spoon to idly stir his coffee, which is still to this moment somehow steaming; but from what Vegeta’s seen, he’s added nothing new to it. A few more stirs and he takes the spoon out, taps it lightly against the lip of the mug a few times, and sets it down the plate. He brings the mug up for a sip and stares into the coffee.

“I know why he killed himself,” Krillin says suddenly.

To Vegeta, this is a complete non-sequitur and it catches him by surprise. He’s still looking at Krillin but certainly no longer trying to stare him out of the room; instead, he barks out a laugh. “You ‘know’ why?” he says. “I already answered. He was a coward.”

Krillin shakes his head. “No…” He finally looks up at Vegeta again, and while the stare isn’t quite as intense as the one he had given earlier or the one Vegeta had been trying to give a moment ago, it does make Vegeta pay attention. “That’s not it,” he continues. “Your ancestor, he… he tipped the scales too much. It was no longer a duel of equivalent exchange.”

“Of course it was.”

“No, it wasn’t!” It is the first time in a while Vegeta’s heard Krillin raise his voice, even though to say he’s yelling would be an overstatement. Still, it’s surprising. “It might’ve been on the same court surrounded by the same witnesses, but… but it wasn’t a proper duel for the throne because the king had nothing to give. You had already dishonored him! And-and if your Tribe hadn’t won, the next Tribe or the one after that would’ve. His life was decided for him. Either die along with his Tribe in disgrace or sit on a Tribeless throne until he had to do the former.” Krillin’s shoulders slump. “He… he was given no choice.”

“He made his choice when he sparred Cold and then allowed him to leave the planet! He was a coward!”

“But it was under your Tribe that the Saiyans became subjugated under Cold, right? How didn’t the same thing happen to you?” Krillin realizes how that sounds as soon as he says it and adds, “To your Tribe, I mean.” He sits back in his chair. “That’s much more of a defeat that some sparring session, right?”

Vegeta’s not sure when Krillin’s body decided to grow him a spine, but he’s not liking it. Seriously, what happened to the quivering piece of shit he was forced to work with on Namek? The accusation should’ve made Vegeta pissed enough to rampage through the entire Brief estates and kill everyone inside; but even more than the sandwiches, the answer’s what deflates him because it addresses perhaps the oldest wound on Planet Vegeta. “... They outlawed it,” he tells Krillin.

Krillin furrows his brows. “What?”

“The duel. Cold outlawed it. Called it…” Vegeta spits out the word, “barbaric.”

“I… I see,” Krillin says. The answer deflates him as well, though since arriving at the Briefs, this has pretty much summarized his existence. He uses his hands to bring his feet up so he can sit cross-legged on the chair, and when he speaks, he idly plays with the hem of his jeans. “Reminds me of  _ sati, _ ” he says.

Vegeta’s back to eating sandwiches as well. “Of what?”

“ _ Sati.  _ Does… does that not translate?”

Vegeta grunts.

“I guess it makes sense that it wouldn’t…” He wears a sad smile. “ _ Sati  _ is a tradition where a widowed woman throws herself onto her husband’s funeral pyre. It’s, uh… mostly an old Hindu tradition – Hindu being a religion here on Earth – but similar practices can be found elsewhere, too. It… well, it was fairly common where I grew up actually.” He takes a sip of his coffee. “It’s been outlawed in most those places now for a long time though. Mostly by colonist nations that felt like the practice was a human rights violation, which, hey, it’s a person essentially committing suicide, but… it’s hard to draw the line sometimes, you know?” 

Vegeta laughs. “Rights violation? Hah! Do you know how hard it would be for Cold to have controlled a planet whose leadership could change so easily? It was to keep us in line, to take away our pride. Nothing more.”

“... So was outlawing  _ sati  _ in some ways.”

There’s a moment of silence between them. Krillin sees that Vegeta’s on his last two sandwiches and knows that any other questions he had would be interrupted by their disappearance. He decides to end the conversation here. 

“Listen,” he says, getting up. “I gotta go out and get more bread and stuff, alright? I should be back by the time you’re done with your session.” He grabs the paper but not the coffee.

There’s a very, very small part of Vegeta that’s… content to hear that Krillin’s lowering himself to completing a servant errand for their exchange, but there’s a much bigger part of Vegeta that wants to make fun of him for it. Guess which one wins? He leers as he says, “No wonder Kakarot likes you. Humans becomes subservient for almost nothing.”

Krillin tucks the paper under his arm and looks at Vegeta. “Vegeta,” he says, “if there’s one thing I pride myself on, it’s giving as good as I get. You know,” he adds with what could be seen as a smirk. “Equivalent exchange.”

Vegeta’s got a sandwich hanging out of his mouth as he watches Krillin leave. Seriously. Namek. He was a little shit. Namek and little shits.

_ What the hell does Earth do to people? _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Sponsor:** The following is brought to you by alchemy. Alchemy: A shiny new piece of armor only costs an arm and a leg.


	9. YOU'RE ALL ALONE

YOU'RE ALL ALONE

 

When lunchtime rolls around, Vegeta walks into the kitchen to find no Krillin and – more importantly – no sandwiches. 

Needless to say, he’s pissed.

Honestly, he’s pissed about a lot of things. Breakfast still has him reeling, he’s still not Super Saiyan yet, and he’s pretty sure he gave himself a concussion while trying to become one just now. This strike to the head has him reconsidering his coma theory from a few days ago, but it mostly has him asking ‘why him’ and ‘why now’. His knuckles are bleeding too because of course they are, and he’s going to have to bear talking to that woman about fixing the gravity controls in the training chamber again because he wrecked it. Completely. He wrecked pretty much  _ everything  _ in the chamber completely, and he finds he’s not happy with himself, something he doesn’t actually realize very often but feels most of the time.

Seriously, where the fuck are his sandwiches?

The two had never established a particular time for questions and sandwiches, Vegeta realizes now, but that’s not his problem. That’s Krillin’s problem, and he had always managed aligning their schedules before. Managed it with such a level of certainty that Vegeta also now realizes that he should’ve been way more suspicious of Krillin’s uncanny ability to predict when Vegeta would be done training. When Vegeta first graced the Brief’s home with his royal presence, he had made it  _ very clear  _ that no one should be able to sense his  _ ki  _ from within the training chamber. That was because he didn’t want Kakarot or anyone else prying into his personal business and, well… he just didn’t want everyone to have a play-by-play of his attempts to become Super Saiyan, alright? If the woman actually built the thing right, then that would mean that Krillin should only be able to sense him  _ after  _ he left the chamber – which means that either the woman built it  _ wrong  _ or the monk’s way more competent at sensing  _ ki  _ than anyone gave him credit for. 

… nah, it’s probably the woman.

Vegeta leans back on his heels so that he can look through the doorway and down the hall. If he had caught sight of the cook, Vegeta might’ve just made do. The hallway’s empty, though, and Vegeta  _ really  _ wants his sandwiches. He wonders if he should find that strange roof again, but the last time he went searching for someone to make him food, he ended up with another person entirely; and he’s not sure what he would do if he came back to Kakarot making tacos. Probably scream. A lot. Or maybe the universe would just implode and do Vegeta a favor. He thinks the universe deserves it.

He moves back into the kitchen again, and he feels it. That weird feeling he had the other night when he was convinced that pigs controlled minds that Krillin had perhaps just… disappeared into the night. Except this time Vegeta’s mostly wondering whether the asshole ran off while he was ahead. Krillin had gotten the last word during their previous conversation, that’s for damn sure, and Vegeta wonders if maybe the bastard wants to keep it that way. Krillin’s always been a bit of a shit in Vegeta’s book, so Krillin taking the low road to stay on top wouldn’t be all that surprising. Even worse, since Vegeta can’t seem to sense his  _ ki  _ for some reason, the jackass could literally be anywhere – hiding out until it’s time for him to return to his stupid turtle house or whatever. What  _ is  _ a turtle anyway? 

No, Vegeta thinks. Don’t go down that road. The pig was enough.

Just as Vegeta’s contemplating turning the whole estate upside-down, in rushes Krillin with a paper bag taller than his head, and he’s apologizing. “Sorry! Sorry,” he says. His eyes are bloodshot. “I, I – well, I… had to run somewhere real quick, you know, before picking up the ingredients for the sandwiches, and I–”

He sets the bag on the counter and turns to explain the situation to Vegeta like common courtesy demands, but he finds Vegeta already seated with a look that couldn’t be more disinterested if it tried.

Krillin’s eyes narrow and, for a moment, he’s back to the Krillin that got the last word this morning. “Never mind,” he says. He turns back to the bag and tilts it forward to start unpacking everything, but he only gets to the loaf before he realizes what he actually just saw. “Uh, Vegeta…”

“What?”

“You, uh… there’s blood. Running down. All over your face.”

It takes Vegeta a few uncoordinated pats to find it, but he does just above his left eyebrow. He brings his hand down to look at the concerning amount of blood that’s now covering it. Huh.

He looks back up at Krillin to find him nearby with a wet rag in hand. Krillin’s hesitant on whether he should try and clean off the blood himself or trust Vegeta’s lack of spatial awareness to somehow manage it itself. Krillin’s surprised when Vegeta swipes the rag from him on the first try and manages to place it on his forehead.

“Wherever it’s coming from, I… I’m pretty sure it’s, ya know...  _ higher, _ ” Krillin tells him.

Vegeta grunts and dips his head further down than necessary. Krillin gets on his tiptoes to see where the bleeding’s coming from. To know for sure though, Krillin would have to… touch him, and that’s pretty much the last thing Krillin wants to do today. He just got back from dealing with enough shit. He really hadn’t needed this. “I’m-I’m not sure?” Krillin says.

Vegeta brings his head back up and wobbles a little as he starts to aimlessly place the rag on his scalp, bring it down after each pat to see if it’s covered in blood. When Krillin doesn’t move, Vegeta says, “It’s fine. Head wounds always bleed like you’ve just been gutted.” He brings the rag down one more time, winces, sees all the blood in the world on it, and applies a lot of pressure to that spot. “Just make the sandwiches.”

“Yeah,” Krillin says, “alright.” He goes back to the bag and gets to work.

Meanwhile, Vegeta’s wondering how the hell he managed to walk out of the training chamber all the way down to the kitchen while blood was cascading down his face. He’s used to self-inflicted injuries, sure, but this is a whole new level of tolerance. He’s actually kind of proud. If this had happened to Kakarot, he would’ve been screaming in pain the moment it happened!

(Yes, Vegeta’s competitiveness really does run that deep).

Krillin looks back over his shoulder as he places the first completed sandwich on the platter. “You, uh… sure you don’t need stitches or anything?” he asks.

Vegeta replies by getting up, walking over, grabbing the sandwich, and flopping back down in his seat at the table. Krillin watches him do all this, rolls his eyes, and goes back to making sandwiches. Vegeta thankfully doesn’t notice his attitude; he’s too busy sinking deeper into his chair upon first bite.

Once he’s done, Krillin sets a platter of six sandwiches down in front of Vegeta and decides to sit down himself. He plays with his sleeve while he watches Vegeta eat a sandwich with one hand and nurse his head with another.

“... how did you do that exactly?” Krillin asks,

"That your question?”

“No?”

"Then don’t ask.”

What happened was that Vegeta had the bright idea to headbutt one of the drones. Mid-morning training always goes better than  _ early  _ morning training since Vegeta’s already accepted that, yes, 300x Earth’s gravity’s probably not  _ that  _ great of an idea; and  _ no,  _ he’s still not Super Saiyan. However, he always manages to do something during these mid-morning sessions that makes his afternoon sessions a bitch. Today, it’s splitting his head open. Yesterday, it was almost curb stomping himself. The day before that? Nearly blowing himself up. The lunchtime sandwiches help improve his mood after these near fatalities, of course, but they don’t once he done eating them. He wonders if he could use the Dragon Balls to make an assembly line of Krillins that would prepare an endless stream of sandwiches to be consumed at a moment’s notice. But if he did that, wouldn’t he have to answer all  _ their  _ questions? Couldn’t he kill the original Krillin so he’s no longer required to answer any questions from anybody ever again? It sure would be nice to kill a Krillin whenever he wanted. Could he then wish for another assembly line of Krillins simply to kill?

“What the hell am I talking about?” Vegeta asks. “I wouldn’t use the Dragon Balls for that!”

“Um… what?”

Vegeta realizes he just said that out loud. He wonders if Krillin heard the part about making an assembly line of hims to kill. Maybe not? Who cares! You’re Vegeta, Prince of All Saiyans! Your ancestor murdered a king! You’re the son of many kings! Kings do not like lemons! You did not eat Nappa in ritualistic cannibalism, but it’d sure be neat to eat Kakarot that way! You saw a pig, but you didn’t eat that pig! You ate other pigs! Your language chip makes speaking weird! You sure wish your culture and self of self weren’t stripped away from you by an intergalactic overlord who kept you around as some weird conquestional token after he killed your entire species! Remember that one time you killed an alien girl because she wasn’t a Saiyan? Well, you’re all alone! You’re all alone! You’re all a –

Vegeta’s mouth hangs open, the second sandwich in his hands nowhere remotely near it. “... I think,” he says, “I have a concussion.”

“... Yeah, I’m gonna go ahead and take a look at your head now.”

Krillin walks over and, after a moment of hesitation, takes either side of Vegeta’s head into his hands. Vegeta awkwardly removes the rage around one of Krillin’s arms and throws it, narrowly missing the sandwiches. Krillin moves his head from one side to the other with care.

“Well, you definitely got yourself,” Krillin tells him, “but I don’t think it’s deep enough for, like, stitches or anything. ‘Course, bleeding has nothing to do with a concussion, but…” He bends Vegeta’s head down just a little bit further. “Okay, you know what? I’ll bite. How did you do this?’

“I was gutted from my throne.”

“What?”

_ "I headbutted a drone!” _

Krillin lets go of Vegeta’s head rather quickly and takes a sizeable step back. “You  _ what?  _ Why?”

Vegeta has no excuse, but his mouth does. “I don’t have to explain anything to you! I’m the Prince of All Saiyans!” Smooth.

Krillin raises an eyebrow. “Okay then,” he replies. “I’m gonna go get you another rag, okay?”

"About time.”

Krillin knows that he should probably do more to address the wound, but he has a feeling that if he tries, Vegeta’s gonna headbutt  _ him;  _ and again, Krillin’s day’s gone poorly enough, so he just fetches the rag.

The two return to how they were before Vegeta started talking complete nonsense: Vegeta eating with one hand and pressing the rag against his head with the other; Krillin doing nothing, though this time he brought them both a glass of water. “Sorry, I, uh… forgot to get more apple cider,” he tells Vegeta as he slides the water over.

Vegeta grunts but doesn’t complain.

“... you seriously headbutted a drone?”

Vegeta stares but doesn’t confirm.

“Isn’t a drone though, like…” Krillin makes a shooting rocket motion with one of his arms.

“They fly,” Vegeta replies, “yes,” like Krillin’s a fucking idiot.

“Huh.”

It goes quiet again and, after a moment, Krillin gives a drawn-out sigh and sinks into his chair. He looks like he hasn’t slept in weeks. He leans his chair back and stares at the ceiling. “Headbutted a drone,” he says mostly to himself, like he’s avoiding thinking about anything different. He tilts his chair back onto four legs and says, “Who taught you how to fight anyway?”

Vegeta’s surprised by the question, but right now he’d be surprised by just about anything. In his mind, he had been on a tirade about that one guy that one time in that one place that didn’t think Raditz would really rip out his heart and eat it, but oh boy was he surprised because Raditz never said no to a taunt. He wonders if Krillin would ever rip out a heart. Nah. Maybe his own?

Oh, right. The question. Vegeta tries to concentrate. “Myself,” he decides.

“You taught yourself?”

“Sure.”

He’s not wrong. He remembers when he was very young, back when he was still bound to his royal Saiyan crib in his multitude of rooms, the old woman looking after him would form his little baby hands into fists and would encourage his sudden boutful kicks. He remembers that a punching doll was his first toy and the light in his father’s eyes when he showed his son how to rip it apart. He remembers sitting on a pillow next to his father’s throne while he watched warriors spar for their rank. He remembers meeting the Saiyan woman, an older cousin, who was to be his teacher. He remembers Frieza killing her.

None of them had really taught him how to fight though. Not really. If Vegeta had to give credit to an outside source, it would be the Saibermen. At age four, he was walked into a ring, and he fought one. He lost. He fought one again. He lost. Vegeta’s not one to criticize his culture, but perhaps his concussion is, so if he had one grievance with it, it was the fact that society said that Saiyans knew how to fight in their bones. Vegeta agrees with this statement for the most part – because he feels it, oh god does he feel it – but sending a baby into a ring or off to a planet without at least some basic training sounds a bit like… having a concussion. Just as adult Vegeta has become obsessed with beating Kakarot, baby Vegeta was obsessed with beating Saibermen.

Was it the same Saiberman each time? Doubtful, but baby Vegeta liked to think so. That’s what inspired him to train. Train hard. Train so hard that, by the time he was able to defeat it, he would be able to punch its head clean off its body or something equally gruesome. Most Saiyans learned to fight entirely on the battlefield, but Vegeta was the prince apparent on a planet he hadn’t been allowed to leave until he hadn’t been allowed to stay, and Planet Vegeta hadn’t had a war of its own in centuries. So he learned with Saibermen instead. And by learned with them, he killed them. A lot. It took him about thirty tries before he was able to snuff out the first one, but damn did he do it and he did it  _ well.  _ It took him another three times until he got his second, but he just kept on truckin’. Soon he was killing all the little bastards. Multiple bastards. All at once. All alone.

Once he was handed over to Frieza and later placed into his care permanently, Vegeta allowed no one to train him. He would spend his days in the chambers instead of receiving instruction, almost dying from a lack of water and foresight. Would Vegeta be better off if someone  _ had  _ trained him? His concussion says yes, but Vegeta says fuck you.

That’s all he has to say on the subject.

“... Fascinating,” Krillin says monotone.

“So you punched a Saiberman’s head clean off.”

“... Yes.” Vegeta hadn’t realized he’d be talking out loud again.

“Alright.”

Vegeta bites into his fourth(?), fifth(?), sixth(?) sandwich. There’s a lot less sandwiches here than he remembers just a moment ago. God, they’re so good. He throws caution to the wind. “What? Weren’t you trained by a turtle – whatever the hell that is?”

Krillin nods his head slowly. “I… you know, I have a feeling that’s supposed to be an insult, but yeah? Kinda? I mean, the turtle that I usually live with, he knows martial arts, and he helped Master Roshi out sometimes back when Goku and I were training, so… yeah? Turtle did train me in a way?”

“Wait, wait, wait,” (Vegeta shakes his sandwich with each repetition). “Turtle’s a name?”

“No,” Krillin replies. “He’s a turtle that’s  _ named  _ Turtle.”

“... That’d be like me being named ‘Saiyan’.”

“No, that’d be like you being named  _ ‘Vegeta’ _ .”

Vegeta’s too concussed to get it. “Kakarot got trained by a turtle?” he asks.

“Yeah, same one,” Krillin replies. “Now thinking about it, Goku’s been trained by all sorts of things. Two old men, a cat, a turtle, a god-Namekian-slug-demon guy, whatever the hell hangs out with him, a Kai…”

Vegeta picks up his last sandwich and shoves it into his mouth. “I’mma go train,” he announces before he’s even finished swallowing. He stands up and wobbles a bit.

Krillin sits up straight and looks rightfully concerned. “Uh… you sure that’s a good idea, Vegeta?”

“I’MMA GO SLEEP!” That came out louder than intended.

Krillin looks even more concerned. “I’m pretty sure you’re not supposed to sleep if you think you’ve got a concussion. It’ll only make it worse.”

“... I’mma go train.”

Vegeta turns around and leaves. Krillin knows better than to try and stop him.

“Alright,” Krillin calls after him. “I’ll, uh, be here!”

He’s gone.

“... alone.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Sponsor:** This chapter is brought to you by concussions! Concussions: you shouldn’t have hit your head that hard, ya dummy.


	10. YOU CAN'T FIX STUPID

YOU CAN’T FIX STUPID

 

Vegeta enters the kitchen past dinnertime to find Krillin sitting there with sandwiches, and honestly, he’s relieved. You see, after the concussion debacle earlier, Vegeta might’ve taken a few hour nap in the training chamber instead of, well…  _ training _ , and he had woken up wondering if lunch had ever happened at all. This is not Vegeta’s first concussion (and god knows it won't be his last), and he’s somehow managed to sleep through every single one of them with varying degrees of success.

His first happened when he was eight.  _ Someone  _ (Nappa) had convinced him to take on six Saibermen at once as a part of King Vegeta’s week-long birthday bash; and while the first five had gone down much faster than anyone expected, the last had been a bitch. Not because it was hard to kill; it was just freakishly fast, so when Vegeta was finally able to catch it, he flip kicked it, and well… let’s just say he didn’t land on his feet. Young Prince Vegeta cracked his head open so badly that the doctors didn’t think even a healing tank could fix it, but here he is, still kickin’. He remembers everything before that first concussion, but a few of the later ones have had him waking up convinced of things. Things like Frieza being dead. (He wasn’t).

A couple of these concussions have also made Vegeta forget important moments, such as the last few minutes of his departure from Earth. No, Vegeta does  _ not  _ remember Krillin holding a sword to his throat like a furious god about to bring down justice. If he had, Vegeta would either respect Krillin a hell of a lot more or would’ve killed him already. Twice.

But Vegeta sees the two bloody rags he used to stop the bleeding now bundled up by the sink and, judging by Krillin’s expression when he looks up from his book, Vegeta most definitely had lunch. On his way out of the chamber, Vegeta had stopped to wipe the blood off his face, a decision he’s now regretting because, if he had walked in with it crusted all over, Krillin’s expression might’ve been even funnier. Krillin’s concerned enough to stand up to greet him though, his opened book now hugged against his chest. “Vegeta,” he says, “are… are you feeling alright?”

Vegeta looks down at the sandwiches, and yes. Yes, he is.

Krillin gives a tired but still genuine smile. “That’s good,” he replies. “I’m glad.” He’s not fully convinced of Vegeta’s answer, but well, he doubts Vegeta will allow him to touch his head again anytime soon, and Krillin doesn’t exactly want to either.

He takes a seat just as Vegeta does. The Saiyan Prince tears into his first sandwich with little to no fanfare, though his face immediately softens when he’s reminded that, yes, everything in his life  _ has  _ been worth it because he can now eat these amazing things three times a day. Krillin meanwhile sets his book down, still open, to the side and reaches for his own sandwich. He takes a look at it, judges it, and then tosses it half heartedly on Vegeta’s pile. Vegeta doesn’t know what he’s thinking, but boy does he like it.

The two have never spent a dinner together since… whatever the hell this whole thing started, and they’re not sure how to act. Dinnertime is usually Vegeta’s free pass to enjoy his sandwiches without Krillin or any unexpected existential crises and Krillin’s self-imposed time to not deal with crazy; however, Vegeta doesn’t actually remember if Krillin asked him a question during lunch or not, and Krillin’s had enough shit happen today that he’s convinced he needs more shit to occur to bring everything full circle. Vegeta could easily just take the sandwiches and leave, and Krillin could leave without taking anything, but neither do. There’s nowhere else to go.

“You, uh… didn’t end up training, right?” Krillin asks.

“Course I did,” Vegeta replies like the fucking liar he is.

“... Uh huh.”

Vegeta’s too happy about the sandwiches to notice the sarcasm, so the two go into their usual pre-question silence.

While Vegeta eats in bliss, Krillin flips over his book to read, but even as he stops to concentrate on every word, he doesn’t seem invested. He looks both exhausted and on edge, like he’s had twenty cups of coffee to keep himself awake, but it’s really just nerves. Just as he turns the page, he stops and perks up a bit in surprise. “Oh!” He throws down the book and goes over to the fridge. Vegeta watches as Krillin finds a brand new bottle of apple cider fairly quickly. He turns to Vegeta. “I went out and bought it after you left,” Krillin tells him, holding the glass bottle. “D-Do you want some?”

Vegeta grunts and returns to his sandwich.

Krillin rolls his eyes, but he closes the fridge with the heel of his foot and still pours him a mug. He heats it up again with energy no one seems to be able to sense and comes back to the table. He slides the mug across, and Vegeta grabs the handle and takes a significant gulp. 

It is only then that Krillin realizes that the mug says YOU CAN’T FIX STUPID. 

He’s not sure whether to cry or laugh. Maybe both? Sure, Krillin thinks that getting into more shit’s the only way to make his day make sense, but this was not the more shit he was looking for. “Vegeta,” Krillin says slowly, “that chip in your head, it… it wouldn’t happen to let you, uh… read everything as well, right…?”

“Of course it does!” Vegeta barks. He brings the mug just below his head. The arrow above the phrase is now pointing directly at him. “What do you think it is? Primitive like this planet’s sticks and stones? The Cold Empire was a lot of things, but not primitive.” 

The Cold Empire is indeed a lot of things. Starting from a small cluster of planets and stars in an otherwise insignificant solar system, Cold and his two sons managed to build a galactic chain that spread from Sector F67B to Sector Z474. (These specifications might not mean anything to  _ you,  _ but it means the Empire is pretty fucking big, okay)? Mind you, a lot of the planets in between Sector F67B and Sector Z474 have either been destroyed, sold, or mined for everything they’re worth, but those that are inhabited are surprisingly booming, mostly because everyone living on them were terrified of what would happen if they suddenly  _ weren’t.  _ Though Cold himself did not leave HomeWorld for many years, he had a particular vision of how he wanted his other worlds to work, and well, you know what they say about dictators: they have a weird way of making their territories both euphoric and downright miserable all at the same time. 

Vegeta doubts the Earthlings know this, but it’s not like the Cold Empire, the Planet Trade Organization, or any of its affiliates just spontaneously combusted upon Frieza and Cold’s deaths; no, instead, Cooler just got what he finally wanted. Cooler had loved his father, sure, and probably still does somewhere in the black hole that is his heart, but after years of cleaning up after daddy’s favorite little boy, he was sick of both of ‘em. Vegeta’s sure that when word of his family’s success never reached HomeWorld, Cooler held a funeral – just like Cold had for King Vegeta – quietly but confidently assumed the throne, and then conveniently forgot Earth ever existed as a token of his appreciation. For you see, anybody with half a brain in the Empire knows that the Empire has never been Cold’s legacy. His legacy has always been Cooler. Cold didn’t see it himself, of course, but Cold didn’t see a lot of things, which is why he’s now dead. Cooler, however, is  _ not  _ dead, and he plans to keep it that way. He has an Empire to run.

Of course, if Vegeta tried to tell the Earthlings this, they wouldn’t listen. Instead, they’d become so convinced of an invasion that they’d probably make some movie detailing what they think would happen and give it some shitty name like “Cooler’s Revenge” or “The Return of Cooler.” Isn’t that what humans do? Make movies about their fears that make no sense? That nicely summarizes Vegeta’s knowledge of cinema here. It sucks.

As Vegeta’s pondering over this, he starts to twist the mug around absentmindedly.

“UH!”

Vegeta stops what he’s doing with the mug and gives Krillin a look that says that Vegeta thinks he’s an idiot. Well, more of an idiot.

In response, Krillin’s whole face flushes. Vegeta has always figured that Krillin was a good deal younger than him since Kakarot’s at least ten years his junior, but for some reason, the red makes him look all the younger. The monk adjusts himself in the chair so he’s sitting on the back of his heels, and he folds his hands up on top of the book. “Uh,” Krillin says weakly, still red, “wh-what other kinds of technology did the Empire have?” He glances very briefly back at the mug. 

Vegeta gives him another idiot look. “What? That’ll take hours.” Days, really. Planet Vegeta didn’t even have half the technology the Cold Empire possesses now, and despite Frieza’s hatred for the planet, the Empire kept it surprisingly equipped. Vegeta’s sure even now that, if he returned, his knowledge of it would be outclassed. 

“Well, yeah,” Krillin says, resisting the urge to roll his eyes because that’ll make the whole coffee mug situation worse, “but you could tell me some of it. You know,” he adds, “in the time it takes to eat all your sandwiches.” 

Vegeta’s not sure how someone can look utterly embarrassed, pathetic, and  _ smug  _ at the same time, but Krillin’s somehow managing it. The sad thing is, for the sandwiches, Vegeta’s willing to take the bait.

He tries to think of… something. What sort of advancements does the Cold Empire have that Earth doesn’t? You know, other than  _ everything imaginable.  _ If you had to make a comparison, the Empire’s like a pickup truck and Earth’s like the squirrel it just ran over. 

“We don’t have those paper things,” Vegeta tries.

Krillin furrows his brow. “Paper things?”

“This morning,” Vegeta replies.

“Oh, a newspaper?” 

Vegeta grunts and takes a bite of his second sandwich.

Krillin tilts his head a bit. “I could’ve guessed that. I mean, they’re not too popular here nowadays either. Most people get their news from TV or the Internet. You know, digitally.” 

“... The what?”

Krillin tilts his head to the other side. “Huh?”

“You’re entering what? A net?” 

Krillin looks down for a moment, bites his lip, and thinks. He’s forgotten almost entirely about the coffee mug. He looks back up with one eyebrow raised. “Okay,” he says. “Let me get this straight. You,” (he gestures at Vegeta), “are from a society far more advanced than Earth and  _ yet,  _ you guys… you guys don’t have something like the  _ Internet _ ?!”

“No,” Vegeta says, “no one has ever entered any nets! How would you get news from a net?”

Krillin shakes his head rapidly. “No, no, no, I’m not talking about physical nets! I’m talking about the  _ Internet! _ I-N-T-E-R-N-E-T.”

Vegeta stares at him.

“Here.” Krillin takes out his phone, makes sure it’s still on airplane mode, and opens his browser. He leans over the table to show Vegeta the screen. “See,” he says, scrolling through a search result for water main repair, “you have something called a-a browser, right? And _ and _ and _ and _ people upload information and things on things called websites, and if you click on one of the links,” (Krillin does), “it’ll take you to where you wanna go.” The page loads. He looks up at Vegeta. “See?”

“Oh,” says Vegeta. “Yeah, they have that.”

Krillin gives him a dumbfounded look, then sits back on his heels. “Oh,” he says, clicking his phone off and placing it next to his book. He looks back at Vegeta. “What’s it called then?”

Vegeta’s not sure how it’ll translate, but here goes nothing. “The Empirical Cloud,” he replies.

“Huh.” Krillin nods slowly. “That… actually kinda makes sense? We call it a cloud too sorta. Well, the part that stores all the information anyway.”

They stare at each other for a moment.

“... Your, uh, chip… you sure it helps out with reading or…?” 

In reply, Vegeta reaches across the table and grabs Krillin’s book. Krillin barely saves his phone and clutches it against his chest as Vegeta flips through the first few pages. He reads a sentence or two and tosses it back. 

Krillin almost drops his phone while halfheartedly putting out his hands to grab it, mostly because he’s staring at Vegeta and is suddenly very pale. He just remembered the mug. “You, uh… wouldn’t happen it be done with your ci-cider yet, right? I’ll be happy to, uh, pour you another glass or just, you know…” He starts reaching for the mug. “... throw this in the sink so it’s outta your way…!”

Vegeta grabs it before Krillin can. He takes enough of a sip that the only word Krillin can see is STUPID, which pretty much sums up how Krillin feels at the moment. Vegeta’s meanwhile too far into a sandwich haze to be angry. He just looks annoyed and confused. 

Krillin sits back on his heels and decides, you know what? Screw it. He’s died twice – the third time might as well be over something really, really stupid. “So,” he says, still nervous despite having just decided to screw it, “this cloud thing… it really expanded over the whole Empire? Isn’t it, like, huge?”

“Yeah,” Vegeta replies, now chewing, “that’s what top-heavy planets are for.”

The term “top-heavy” is a subcategory of the very broad, loosely defined class “excess,” and excess planets are used for a variety of reasons. You see, when a planet is classified as “excess,” it is most of the times flat-out destroyed; however, after having difficulties in demolishing some of these planets (too big; too volatile; planet not understanding that it was, in fact, destroyed), Crown Prince Cooler put forward the motion of full-planet outposts. Before this point, the Empire had relied on space stations in the middle of the boonies, which, while convenient, cost way more than utilizing a planet they would’ve had to  _ pay  _ employees to destroy. This resulted in what are called “top-heavy planets.” The outpost itself is ridiculously condense while the rest of the planet remains utterly void of life. In the center of these outposts are the Empire headquarters, and in the center of these Empire headquarters are giant towers fifty-stories tall that connect to orbiting satellites that send signals to the next planet over. Chain these from one planet to another, and well, a lot of things are born: the Empirical Cloud, television and radio broadcasts, teleportation pads. These planets support the entire Empire’s infrastructure. 

Vegeta explains all of this but with a lot shorter sentences and mouthfuls of sandwich. 

“That’s amazing,” Krillin says after he’s done. “Those outposts must be huge! Just-just tons of people! I can’t even imagine!”

Vegeta grunts and says, “Most only have five thousand. Usually less.”

Krillin’s mood deflates. Again. “Only… only that many people for an entire planet?” he asks.

“They were meant to be destroyed, remember?” 

“Well, yeah, but…” Krillin looks side-to-side as though calculating something, and then back to Vegeta. “There’s more people in a three-mile radius of  _ here  _ than an entire planet  _ there. _ It’s just… sad, is all.”

Vegeta shows nothing that would suggest that he agrees.

Krillin sees this and decides today’s the worst day to be arguing with Saiyans about morality. “So, did people  _ stay  _ on these planets?” he asks. “I mean, like, temporarily. While they were travelling to somewhere more… populated.” 

The prince waves him off as he takes another bite. “Space stations. In orbit. Most don’t step foot on top-heavies. No point.”

“... Have you?”

Vegeta swallows his second-to-last sandwich and brings up his mug to observe the half-glass of cider inside. “Once,” he replies.

Despite assuming guardianship over Vegeta at a very young age, Frieza did not send him out on Planet Trade Organization business for a very long time. Vegeta’s still not sure why the warlord kept him under lock and key for so long, but after King Vegeta’s funeral on HomeWorld, Prince Vegeta had not stepped foot on solid soil for over three years. In that time, a warship patrolling what used to be Saiyan space found Raditz’s pod hovering where Planet Vegeta should have been; Nappa’s loyalty to the crown turned from cultural duty to personal obsession; and Vegeta trained so hard that his demons grew louder and his anger nearly killed him. When Frieza  _ did  _ decide that Vegeta and his lackeys should start contributing, Vegeta barely spent more than 24 hours on any one planet – and most of these hours (when not eating delicious cuisine) were spent flying and killing and laughing like a goddamn maniac. 

So when Vegeta was assigned to Top-Heavy Z457B for six months, he wasn’t entirely sure what to do. Whoever originally conquered the planet had obviously not done a very good job because apparently some of its inhabitants had escaped to the next planet over and were hellbent on taking their homeland back. War vessels were already in place to take care of the insurgency, sure, but seeing as the Empire had just built a tower there that would connect its newest galactic venture to HomeWorld, the operation was considered important enough to require foot soldiers. This would be the only time in Vegeta’s life he was ever stationed anywhere, and honestly, he’s happy it was his first and last for a lot of reasons.

Outside the outpost, the planet was a wasteland. Inside the outpost too really. The whole thing was just awful to be honest, and Vegeta hated it. His home planet had never ranked high for its aesthetics, but at least it could’ve been _ ranked. _ Z457B had all the character of a fish skeleton that retained all its stench, but nothing that could identify the remains as anything more specific than simply ‘fish.’ Vegeta and his servants were put up in the house of an engineer, who moved his family to one of the break rooms at headquarters for the entirety of the Saiyans’ stay, but over the course of their six-month deployment, Vegeta realized he could have stayed in any house on any street since they were identical inside and out. It was also the only time in Vegeta’s life he had ever been without a dedicated room to train in, but he did have an endless expanse of purple sky and a wind that refused to end, kicking up enough dust that the young prince swore he saw figures form in it as he punched and kicked and screamed. The planet should have felt like freedom to him; however, by the time his time there was over, it felt more like a prison that Frieza’s ship ever had, an idea that kept him awake at night even now.

This was also the first and only time Vegeta ever met Crown Prince Cooler in person.

“Wait.” Krillin starts counting on his fingers. “Frieza, Cold…” He cautiously holds up a third one. “C-Cooler…I’m, uh, not liking this naming scheme. Please don’t tell me…”

He does.

Krillin nearly falls out of his chair. “Frieza has a brother?!”

See?

“He’s – you don’t think he’s coming  _ here, _ right?” Krillin sounds worried, sure, but mostly just frustrated and exhausted. It’s not the over-the-top response Vegeta was expecting. He’s almost annoyed about it. 

He decides to just reply instead, “Of course not.” He picks up the last sandwich. “Just because they’re from the same shit stain of a father doesn’t mean they think the same. Hell,” (he takes his first bite), “he probably poured a glass of wine for us at the damn coronation.” 

“He’s King now?”

“Has to be.” 

“And you,” Krillin says, sorta quiet, “really don’t think he’ll come here…?”   
  
“No.” 

Vegeta does not mean to say it confidently enough to put Krillin at ease, but here Krillin is, strangely at ease for the first time in a week. 

Then Vegeta lifts the mug again, and he’s totally not.

“Uh,” Krillin says, thankfully a good deal quieter than last time. He still blushes. “You, uh… you said you’ve only met him once, right? I’m… surprised?”

Vegeta shrugs after he takes a sip of his cider. “Don’t be. I’ve only seen Cold three.” 

The first time had been, of course, King Vegeta’s funeral. Before this, Vegeta had seen images of Cold posted in his father halls and in Frieza’s ship and maybe once or twice on screen. At the funeral, Vegeta remembers thinking Cold was much taller than he had expected, and the squeeze the man gave his shoulder made him think of teeth ripping into his skin. The second time had only been a week later while Vegeta sat and tried to eat the first twelve course meal he had had in weeks. Frieza brought Cold by the dining room, and that whole exchange is how young Vegeta decided that killing Frieza by stuffing food down his throat would be a great idea.

The third time was obviously on Earth, and while he’s pissed he couldn’t finish off Cold himself (just like he’s pissed he didn’t get to finish off Frieza either), he has the same strange appreciation for the act that he’s sure he shares with Cooler. 

“Was this insurgency really that bad?” Krillin asks.

“What?”

“With the old inhabitants of that top-heavy planet. I mean, you said that was the only time you met Cooler, right? But you said no one ever  _ lands  _ on these things. Why was he there?”

Short answer? The insurgency developed into a full-on rebellion. You’d think that after centuries upon centuries of rule that Cold would’ve learned the old adage of ‘keep your friends close and your enemies closer,’ but he hadn’t. Instead, new recruits – fresh from having their planet and people slaughtered – were given the shitty work, and the shitty work was always in the middle of nowhere. Seeing that this planet had recently been… relieved of its usual inhabitants, and those inhabitants were now fighting for their rights and revenge, well… the results were unsurprising. 

Those who had remained loyal (or, rather, those who were smart enough to know how fucking terrible of an idea this was) could’ve fended them off, sure, but Cooler had been in the area for reasons Vegeta’s still not aware of and had decided to drop by and end it once and for all. 

And oh shit, did he. If Vegeta had been around for Frieza’s whole ‘fuck the Saiyans’ episode that resulted in his homelessness and orphaning, Vegeta would’ve realized that the whole affair was surprisingly similar, except while Frieza laughed like a goddamn maniac, Cooler did it with a face as tough as tungsten. Vegeta had been just one of many among the crowd that witnessed the event, and while Vegeta had never underestimated Frieza’s power, it was in that moment the young prince realized that he might never actually beat him. That it was a real possibility that Vegeta and his last two brothers would spend the last of the Saiyan race’s days serving the family that enslaved them for centuries. That Vegeta and Nappa and Raditz should’ve just turned from Saiyan to hot matter to nothing like their king, their people,  and their whole planet had when, it turns out, Frieza deemed it time to end them. And that night would be the first of many where Vegeta would stand outside Nappa and Raditz’s door and contemplating killing them then, in that moment, because Vegeta knew his temper would break someday, and they would no longer even have a prince, and then truly the race would be gone. 

Before that night happened though, but still after Cooler had demonstrated a power beyond Vegeta’s imagination, the young prince had landed back on the top-heavy planet and decided to go off in the distance to… you know, yell a little. He thought he had picked a decent enough spot where, if the other two Saiyans really needed him for something, he’d be easily found, but what Vegeta found instead was the Hoorleian trash who started the rebellion in the first place. 

She was not in good shape. Thick, green blood oozed from where she must’ve had several arms and leg once, her hair was burnt off, and her nose shattered to the point where the bone was slipping out. Vegeta might not have even noticed her if it hadn’t been for the sobbing. She was too small – almost as small as Vegeta – and other than the green seeping out of her, she matched the dust of her home. 

This would be the only time for many, many years that Vegeta found himself hesitant to kill someone. It wasn’t out of respect, camaraderie, or even pity. (He had only seen her face once when the rebellion first sprung up, and that was on a tablet with the mission details). It was just… she was the first life Vegeta had seen outside the outpost, and if he looked at the blood just right as it spread, it looked like the same color green as the grass Vegeta used to train in back at the his family’s castle gardens. He had wondered if, had he a way to bring his planet back, if that’s all it would be left – just green grass that was really blood staining a world cleared of every ounce of life.

He thinks she said his name. He doesn’t remember. He does know that she asked him to kill her. He did.

Vegeta’s heard all sorts of things about Cooler since then, obviously. At times, it seemed like the general consensus among the higher ups was that the Empire would be a better place with Cooler in charge; but that’s the mentality all occupied countries hold towards their leadership. Someone always sounds better when really they’re not. Cooler won’t come to Earth, and he’ll probably halt expansion if he knew what was good for him; but he wouldn’t be any better than his father or little brother. He’d just be different. 

Vegeta only tells Krillin some of this, but Krillin seems to have gotten the picture. “How did it feel?” he asks. “Seeing them all die like that?” 

“His strength was incredible,” Vegeta replies.

“No, no. I mean, those people in the rebellion… they were like you, Nappa, and Raditz, right? Homes destroyed, families ruined? And he just… killed them all.” Krillin snaps his fingers as he says, “Like that.” 

“And?”

Krillin sinks into his chair a little. “You didn’t feel anything for them…?”

“Why would I?” Vegeta asks. He takes the last bite of his sandwich, and then the last sip of his cider. “They were weak. They couldn’t learn that.” 

Vegeta gets up and Krillin reaches across the table to grab the mug like its a lifeline. He holds it to his chest, covering the words, and he asks, “Do all Saiyans think like this?”

“If they’re worth anything,” Vegeta replies. The sandwiches are done, but he’ll never miss a chance to gloat about his race or lineage. 

“Huh.” Krillin looks off to the side, his frown deep and his eyes tired, but then he looks up at Vegeta again with a crooked smile and says, “Well, you know what they say. You can’t fix stupid.” 

“In that Empire?” Vegeta says. “No way.” 

Krillin stays in the kitchen and scrolls through search result after search result about water mains. Vegeta leaves the kitchen and, down the hall, tries to see if maybe, just maybe he can connect to the cloud. Not a chance. You really can’t fix stupid, his demons tell him. You really can’t.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Sponsor:** This chapter is brought to you by bad movies. Bad movies: they’re almost as bad as insulting quips on coffee mugs!


	11. BACK TO ROOTS

BACK TO ROOTS

 

Vegeta walks into the kitchen the next morning to find Krillin making his sandwiches and, honestly, it’s the first good thing to happen to Vegeta all day. Part of him believes that yesterday must’ve been a concussion-induced nightmare because, really, would Krillin walk out on him so easily? Would Vegeta really headbutt a drone? Would Vegeta really admit that maybe – just maybe – he misses a place he shouldn’t call home? His brain is screaming no, but his skull is nodding yes. God, it hurts. It hurts so freaking much, and while Vegeta prides himself on being a free man, boy were those healing tanks nice. Back when he was in Frieza’s armada, he never had to feel pain for very long. Whenever he landed anywhere civilized, he had state-of-the-art healthcare; and if civilization was not nearby, well… he could just put himself to sleep until he got there. Earth’s primitive though, and probably always will be (since the only woman whose mind is worth a damn doesn’t seem to be doing anything about it), so he won’t be having any healing baths anytime soon.

Oh well. His ancestors never had ‘em either. Time to get back to his roots.

… which wouldn’t include taking sandwiches from a human monk, mind you, but Vegeta’s decided to ignore that part. 

Speaking of the monk, he’s at the counter putting together the fifth of seven sandwiches. “Morning,” he says. He’s listening to the radio. He doesn’t bother turning around.

Vegeta takes a seat and finds he’s kind of happy that the sandwiches aren’t done yet. Not because he’s being forced to wait, but because he knows they’ll be fresh, and there’s nothing better than that. As usual, morning training didn’t go well, and Vegeta’s pissed about that, sure, but just being in this kitchen calms him a bit. Krillin’s a stress and always will be (the punk), but the sandwiches are still going strong; and for Vegeta, a train never stops when there’s still tracks to run.

Whatever the case, the radio’s gabbing about something called ‘football,’ and Vegeta can’t be bothered. Krillin seems to be having a decent time with it though. When the newscaster mentions something about a loss for West City, Krillin says, “Yamcha must be pissed,” and chuckles. It’s strangely wistful.

“He’s the three-eyed one, right?” Vegeta asks as Krillin turns towards him with the platter of sandwiches. “The one who lost his dumb arm?”

“Who?” Krillin asks. He sets the platter down. “Yamcha? Nah, you’re thinking of Tienshinhan. I’m,” (he furrows his brow and sits down), “... not actually sure if Tien likes football. Maybe?” He contemplates it for a moment before bringing his coffee cup (selected for its lack of writing) near his lips. “Do you know what football is?”

Vegeta grunts.

Krillin’s well-versed enough in Vegeta’s noises to take note of the disinterest. “Well, anyway,” he says after taking a sip, “Yamcha’s the guy with, you know, the scars? Cocky sometimes, has long hair, partners up with a flying cat?” When he sees Vegeta’s as confused as ever, he adds, “You’ve probably seen Bulma yelling at him before…”

“Oh, right,” Vegeta says. “Him.”

He takes the first bite of his first sandwich to congratulate himself. He deserves something for remembering such an insignificant detail, right?

Krillin meanwhile is concerned about the fact that, just now, Vegeta technically started a conversation. Vegeta never starts conversations. Ever. Unless he’s about to kill you, Krillin thinks. Probably not even then. He decides not to think about it too hard. Instead, he pays attention to the radio while Vegeta pays attention to the sandwiches. It works.

By the time Krillin opens his mouth again, Vegeta’s figured out that football must be some kind of sport, and that Krillin’s question of the morning be would somehow related to that. He’s right. But before Krillin gets the whole sentence out, he cuts himself off. It’s abrupt enough that Vegeta actually flinches. Krillin sets his coffee down and looks to the left out of the corner of his eye.

There’s more than a moment of silence.

“You… you broken?” Vegeta finally asks because, hell, maybe that’s possible with humans? He doesn’t fucking know anymore.

The question causes Krillin to snap out of it and look back at Vegeta. “S-Sorry,” he says, blushing. “I-I got distracted, um…” He pauses and looks in the same direction again, then like that he's suddenly out of his chair. “I’ll be right back,” he tells Vegeta.

Before Vegeta’s can protest, he’s gone.

Not that Vegeta was  _ going _ to protest, of course. It’s just that this is the second time Krillin’s run out of the kitchen without Vegeta’s permission, and it’s annoying. Really annoying. Wasn’t Krillin the one who insisted on getting something outta this whole sandwich situation? Wasn’t he the one who decided he needed a little consistency in his life for some strange reason? It’s Vegeta who needs some damn consistency! Krillin can’t just half-ass the whole thing! That defeats the purpose! How dare he just –

Not even thirty seconds after Vegeta starts bitching, in walks Bulma Briefs.

She enters with a huff and an afro that’s… unkempt at beast. You see, Bulma Briefs is Stressed. This is a statement that can be used as a summation of her life since Bulma Briefs is always stressed for some reason or another, but the stress she’s been experiencing these past few days has graduated to a capital ‘S.’ It’s made worse by the fact that she has no way of de-escalating it. 

… well, okay, yes she does, but she’s having trouble doing it, and that’s the problem. The ensuing all-nights have resulted in knots in her hair, bags under her eyes, and a faint but consistent smell of B.O. that she’s so far been able to blame on someone else. 

Needless to say, she’s not very happy.

“There you are!” she shouts as she rounds the table and stands near where Krillin had been sitting not thirty seconds prior. “I’ve been looking all over for you! Am I gonna have to put some sorta tracker on you or something?” She scrunches her nose on instinct. “Ew, you stink!” 

She’s not wrong. “Look who’s talking,” Vegeta mumbles as he takes another bite of his sandwich. Usually she gets more of a raise out of him, but he has a faint hope that he’ll be able to go back to enjoying his sandwiches soon enough, and well… they don’t taste as good when he has high blood pressure.

“I’m not here for your insults, Vegeta,” she tells him. “I’m here to yell at you!”

“Well, you done yet?”

“Done? I haven’t even started!” She throws her hands down on the table. “Do you have any idea the amount of time I’ve had to put into fixing that stupid training room for you these past few days? I know some wear and tear is inevitable, but I feel like I’m building a new one every night!”

“And?”

“And I’m telling you to  _ stop it! _ I’m busy, Vegeta! I’ve got my own problems! You understand me?”

He doesn’t. He understands the concept of other people having problems, sure, but when those problems intersect with something he wants, his understanding gets short-circuited. Especially in this case, when  _ she _ was the one who insisted that  _ he  _ live here. Her job as a hostess is to be at his every beck and call. Surely Earth can’t be  _ that _ different, right? He’s starting to doubt it. 

“Okay, Vegeta?” Bulma goes on. “For the fifth time, don’t  _ attack _ the drones! There was one in there that almost looked like you planted your face into it!”

Yeah, that’s because he did, the demons respond; and Vegeta stuffs the rest of the sandwich into his mouth to make them shut up.

That’s around the time Bulma notices that there are, in fact, sandwiches. And a coffee cup. And a radio. She stands up straight, puts her hands on her hips, and asks, “Who is the world made you this many sandwiches at seven in the morning?” 

Vegeta’s about to answer, but she cuts him off. “Whatever. I don’t care.” Bulma looks over towards the radio, listens for a second, then looks back at Vegeta. “Wait, you know what football is?” 

Vegeta’s about to answer  _ that _ , but Bulma doesn’t care about that either. “Look, Vegeta, I don’t have time to be dealing with your bullshit, alright? I have way more important things going on right now, and they don’t involve you. So why don’t you just sit here with-with your sandwiches,” (she gestures towards them with some confusion), “and-and your coffee,” (she gestures towards that too, and it’s the first time Vegeta notices that Krillin shoved it towards him on his way out), “and just calm down, alright?”

Vegeta would usually be yelling to high heaven by now, but he’s too confused about the coffee and in too much of a sandwich high to properly respond. 

Bulma takes the silence as an agreement, mostly because she takes anything she finds agreeable to be a universal sign of agreement. “Glad we understand each other!” she says, clapping her hands together. “Just don’t put too much pressure on the cook staff, alright? I had a guy quit a few days ago because of you.”

Vegeta’s still too dumbfounded to respond until he says, “Later!” and grabs a sandwich off the top of the pile on the way out. He snaps out of it when he hears down the hallway, “Wow, this sandwich is fantastic!”

He twists around in his chair and screams, “THAT’S MINE!”

He hears back, “I BOUGHT IT; I EAT IT,” and like that, she’s gone.  

And not even thirty seconds after Vegeta starts bitching about  _ that _ , Krillin’s back.

He grabs his coffee cup as he’s walking back towards his seat and, in the same place Bulma had just been standing, takes a shallow sip. Then he’s back at the counter where he left all the ingredients and, before starting on making an extra sandwich, he turns down the radio a bit. “Sorry,” he says, not facing Vegeta. “Sometimes nature calls, you know?” 

In response, Vegeta chews slowly on his next sandwich. He knows he’s been duped – he just has no idea  _ how.  _

He’s about to ask, but Krillin changes the mood. “So, Saiyan sports,” he says as he spreads the last of the mustard onto the top slice of bread. “That’s what I was asking about, right?” 

Vegeta doesn’t answer him, but Krillin doesn’t seem to mind. He turns off the radio entirely before bringing over the extra sandwich and restoring order back to the platter. He sits down and grabs his coffee, and it’s like nothing happened. 

Vegeta’s willing to go along with it because he doesn’t want to care. “Too broad,” he says.

Krillin furrows his brow. “Too broad?”

“The question. Saiyan sports. Too broad.” 

Krillin sets his coffee down. “Oh, right,” he says. “That probably includes stuff that was popular in the Empire, right? There has to be a lot, huh?”

No kidding. Many planets in the Empire were outright destroyed, of course, so many great pastimes have been lost to the cosmos, but Frieza had a soft spot for good ol’ competition.  Want to live? Compete amongst yourselves to prove you’re strong enough to be of use. Want to please? Compete amongst yourselves to stand out. Want to amuse? Play a goddamn sport. It’s actually a path many in the Empire have taken to make their way through life with minimal complaint, and those people were probably the only ones to truly mourn Frieza when they heard of his death. (Cooler’s no sports fan). Frieza’s fascination with all things athletic gave rise to all manner of sports – so many that you could not possibly keep track of them all.

Vegeta was a fan of almost none of them. Why train to kick or throw or what-have-you when you’re not using those skills to beat the shit out of someone? It’s just not practical!

“I guess what I was asking,” Krillin says, “is about Saiyan sports in particular. Did your planet have anything original to it?”

“... honorable duel of equal exchange,” Vegeta replies.

“That wasn’t a sport! That was a coup!” 

Oh. Vegeta tries again. “... third-class warriors fought in pits a lot?”

Krillin doesn’t seem so sure. “Were there any rules?”

“... kill everything?”

Look, if you want the honest-to-god truth, which Vegeta will never give because he’s not an honest-to-god person, Vegeta has no fucking clue. 

Well, okay, it’s a bit more complicated than that. You see, Vegeta wasn’t on his planet for very long, and seeing that Frieza destroyed it soon afterwards, there’s… gaps in his knowledge. Saiyan lore? Knows it like the back of his hand. Saiyan history? Even more so. Saiyan customs? Definitely. Anything else? Doesn’t know shit. He knows modern culture had been heavily influenced by the Empire because the Empire infects everything it touches, so he can cobble together pieces into a narrative that mostly makes sense, but he’s not sure if any of those narratives are actually true. He should’ve asked Raditz or Nappa while he had the chance. He wonders why he never did but he doesn’t let himself for very long.

The pits, though – the pits were definitely a thing. He remembers going to them with his father on occasion and it always being a big hoopla whenever they did. Going to the pits was one of the only times Vegeta ever found himself outside of the caste walls, though, so he always made a big hoopla about it too. The old woman would dress him up in his ceremonial robes and walk behind the carriage during the procession and make sure Vegeta didn’t wipe too much blood of his face during the ensuing feast. It was also one of the only times he saw the entirety of his massive Tribe in one place, and there was so much bowing and kissing that, by the end of it, he could hardly see straight.

He remembers the first fight he watched particularly well. As his father sat on a throne of bones and gold and Vegeta on a pillow by his side, two warriors in the pit swore their allegiance and lives to the royal family’s entertainment. 

Then they killed each other. Literally. One had a sword, the other had an ax, and they both swung in such a way that they managed to behead one another. It took the crowd a moment to catch up on what had just happened until five-year-old Prince Vegeta had started laughing. Then the crowd had laughed too. (You never want to let a Saiyan prince laugh by himself). It’s one of those things that would’ve been written about in the epic of Prince Vegeta, 202nd of His Name had Planet Vegeta survived. It would have only been proceeded by the event that earned him the title ‘Untrodden.’ 

Vegeta wonders sometimes how many would’ve been decapitated in his name if his planet had survived. Probably a lot. It would’ve been a better death than the one they had. At least they could’ve gone down fighting instead of like dogs. 

“We had a lot of things like that too,” Krillin says. “Fighting, I mean. We still do, though most of ‘em don’t involve killing anymore. Actually, all of us used to enter these World Tournaments that would have you fighting one-on-one. Goku won one of ‘em. Against Piccolo.” 

Vegeta almost chokes on his sandwich. “That green asshole competed in a tournament?”

Krillin gives a real smile. “Yeah, I know, sometimes I can’t believe it either. I actually fought him, you know.”

“And you didn’t  _ die _ ?”

“Hah. Very funny.” Krillin motions with the mug towards Vegeta. “You know, one year Tienshinhan was actually the one who beat Goku.”

Vegeta almost chokes on his sandwich again. “The three-eyed guy?”

“Yeah, that’s right.”

Vegeta will always be embarrassed about how Goku beat him that day he came to Earth – even years after he had laid their rivalry-to-the-death to rest; but he’ll never be as embarrassed as he is in this exact moment. Tien?  _ Tienshinhan  _ beat Goku in a fight? The guy who lost his arm and died from performing the same attack too many times?  _ That  _ guy beat  _ Kakarot?  _ THAT GUY beat KAKAROT and Vegeta didn’t?

Vegeta’s not sure if the sandwiches can cure this. He might need to kill everyone on the planet now, starting with  _ fucking Tienshinhan. _

Krillin raises an eyebrow at Vegeta’s now extremely red face. “It was on a technicality,” he says, “if that makes you feel any better.” 

“WHY DIDN’T YOU SAY THAT IN THE FIRST PLACE?”

Because Krillin needed a laugh this morning. The past few days have been rough. “They were up in the air, and Goku hit the ground outside of the ring a split second before Tien did. Announcer called it. Tien actually felt terrible about the whole thing.” 

Vegeta’s face is back to normal and the sandwiches are going down well again. “Next thing you’re going to tell me is that  _ you’ve  _ beaten Kakarot before.”

Krillin raises an eyebrow again. “Vegeta,” he says. “Goku and I trained together. For years.  _ Of course  _ I’ve beaten Goku in a fight. I’ve beaten Goku in  _ a lot _ of fights.”  

Vegeta’s not sure how to respond to that. He decides it’s best to keep eating. If he keeps eating, then Krillin won’t be dead, and that’s probably a good thing.

Krillin knows it’s time to bail. “I gotta take care of a few things,” Krillin says, getting up from the table with his coffee. “I’ll see you at lunch, alright?”

As the monk’s leaving, Vegeta says, “The woman’s not coming back, right?” 

Krillin pauses for a second, then looks back at him with a smile. “Nah, enjoy your sandwiches.” 

Vegeta does.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Sponsor:** This chapter is brought to you by fucks. Fucks: Bulma gives exactly zero of them.


	12. OF ALL THE OTHER OPTIONS

OF ALL THE OTHER OPTIONS

  
  


“So,” Krillin says. It’s lunchtime, and the two are sitting in the kitchen eating sandwiches because that’s what they apparently do now. “Where’s the most interesting place you’ve ever been?”

Before we get to that though, let’s clarify a couple of things: First of all, Vegeta’s the only one actually eating sandwiches. Krillin’s not, but at this point, that shouldn’t be much of a surprise. He stopped after his first day of camping out at the Briefs because he currently can’t stomach anything solid, and nothing’s quite as solid as those sandwiches. Even coffee’s starting to become too thick, and while Krillin knows this should be concerning, he’s mostly just annoyed. Thus, he’s currently trying to force down a yogurt cup. It’s not going well.

Secondly, this is the quickest Krillin has ever asked Vegeta a question. Usually he allows some silence beforehand so they can both get comfortable, but the moment the Vegeta takes his first bite, there it is. Vegeta wonders if this means that Krillin’s getting used to him. More importantly, he’s trying to figure out if he minds or not. On one hand, the idea kinda makes Vegeta wanna hurl all over the goddamn table; but on the other, more questions guarantee more sandwiches, which is always a good thing in Vegeta’s book, so he’s willing to deal with whatever nauseating thing has has to in order to get them.

Anyway, back to the matter at hand – which is Vegeta shrugging.

“Uh…” Krillin swirls his yogurt, not bothering to look down at it. “Is… is that your answer?”

Vegeta gives even less of a shrug and continues eating.

“You’ve been to all sorts of places though, right?” Krillin asks. “I mean, that was pretty much your job, right? To go place?”

“My job,” Vegeta tells him, “was to conquer and then usually  _ destroy  _ places.”

“Well, yeah, but you still had to  _ go  _ to them to do that, right? That would indicate that you should, I dunno, have some sorta… opinion about these places? Maybe?”

Vegeta’s not a fan of the tone Krillin’s taking, but the sandwiches negate it for the most part. They still don’t stop him from responding, “Stop asking such broad-ass questions,” though.

“Excuse me?”

“First the-the,” (he tries to find the word), “ _ sporting  _ thing and now this. Do you know how many stupid planets I’ve been to?”

“... No?”

A lot. Vegeta’s been to  _ a lot  _ of stupid planets. So many, in fact, that they’ve started to blur into something resembling one long acid trip. You know, one of those written by a person who obviously has never tried the stuff? This is because the planets themselves were actually quite distinct, so any attempt to congo them along in one long memory makes you look… well, not well. The funny thing about it (according to Raditz) is, due to the Empire’s sudden lack of Saiyan warriors, the three remaining members travelled to  _ way  _ more places in the universe than a normal member of their race usually would have. The thing that makes that funny (according to  _ Nappa _ ) is that, had Vegeta become king, he would’ve seen almost none of it. He would’ve remained under Frieza’s watchful gaze until his coronation and, after that, would’ve most likely never stepped foot off of Planet Vegeta again. He would’ve been groomed to serve, and his heir and every heir after him would’ve suffered the same fate of hostage and vessel. Frieza probably would’ve taken him out on a raid or two – you know, to really cement the blood lust? But, one day when Vegeta asked why King Cold never left HomeWorld, Frieza replied that princes conquer; kings defend home and heart. Vegeta would’ve lived in a cage for the rest of his life.

Life had other plans, of course. It always does, especially for Vegeta, who for years has been defying his rather than living it. After his tour on the war vessel and six month stay on the top-heavy, he had actually been excited to see new places. This mostly stemmed from his desires to take out his frustrations on something much larger than himself, but it was nice to finally be  _ out  _ all the same. For the first few years, he was required to return to the war vessel after each new mission; but over time, Frieza threw his bones further and further away until Vegeta was almost as independent as any of the other officers in the armada. Vegeta will never accept this or perhaps even think it, but the genocide of his people had afforded him the opportunity to become an individual in some way; for other than his honorifics, strange relationship with Frieza, and the two warriors bound to him by the Gut Blood, Vegeta was no longer important in Life, and that’s why he spends so much time defying it.

Vegeta doesn’t tell Krillin any of this though. Instead he says, “I’ve been to a lot, okay?” He takes the first bite into his second sandwich and settles a bit more into the place Life has decided to take him now. By god, he’s gonna get back at it if it’s the last thing he does.

Krillin furrows his brow, trying to figure out how to proceed, but settles on “Alright then.” He still hasn’t taken another bite of his yogurt, and his stomach’s better for it. “Well, how about the last place you went before you came to Earth? You know, that first time? What was that place like?”

Vegeta has to think about it. The excitement of the Dragon Balls had made that whole year a blur. You know, up until the pummeling. And accidentally killing the guy who made the things work. And Kakarot. And general self-hatred. God, that mission was a disaster. Vegeta’s still embarrassed about it. Focus. Right. “It was full of…” He chews slowly as he thinks about it. “... bug people,” he settles on.

Krillin perks up. “Really?”

It takes Vegeta a moment, but then he realizes, yeah, really. He had just said the first thing that came to mind; he hadn’t meant to be  _ right.  _ Now thinking about it though, Vegeta had been the one who programmed that location into his pod. Huh.

“Why did you stop there?” Krillin asks, interrupting Vegeta’s train of thought. “Was it on your way to Earth or before that?”

“On the way,” Vegeta replies.

“What was it like?”

Dry… barren… infested with bugs. Vegeta remembers that Raditz had actually mentioned it once, just before he went to Earth to retrieve Kakarot. Vegeta’s not sure why that made him want to go after his death, but the demons have a few ideas. Oh! “Nappa and I were heroes for about five minutes.”

He’d hoped that Krillin would take the bait, but instead, he’s immediately suspicious. “What happened to mess that up? You punch off one of their heads like you did to that Saiberman’s when you were little?”

Vegeta gives a surprisingly genuine smirk. “No, I did  _ that  _ five minutes  _ before  _ we were heroes.”

Krillin can’t help but smile too despite the larger implications. “Part of the reason for your herodom, I’m sure,” he says. 

“Yup.”

Krillin chuckles and, stupidly, takes a bite of his yogurt soon afterwards. He only realizes it after swishing it around in his mouth a few times, and his face isn’t pleasant when he manages to swallow. “I think,” he tells Vegeta, pointing to the cup with the spoon, “that this is spoiled.” He nods a few times as he swallows once more to confirm it, then gets up to take the cup and spoon to the sink.

Vegeta’s about to tell him to stop eating that liquid shit and have sandwiches like a real man, but he isn’t sure what that would do to his own sandwich supply, so he shuts himself up with a nice big bite instead.

As Krillin’s rinsing out the cup, he looks over his shoulder and asks, “So, anything else about that planet that you remember?”

“I destroyed it?” Vegeta tries.

Krillin turns back to the sink and nods mostly to himself. “That… sounds about right.” He turns off the water and grabs a dishrag. While drying off the spoon, he turns around and asks, “Okay, what about the last place you  _ didn’t  _ destroy?”

He’s able to put away the spoon, throw away the yogurt cup, and come back the table with a glass of water for him and another cup of cider for Vegeta by the time Vegeta’s able to remember. “One of the market planets. The one in Sector 4.” 

This is the same planet where, years before, Vegeta had entered a ratty tea stall for a cup of  _ Guraran fefulle  _ tea and left with a body count. It is also the planet Vegeta had been on when he first learn of the Dragon Balls. Funnily enough, he had been at  _ another  _ tea stall when that happened, and even Vegeta’s aware of the so-called “irony.” Nappa had insisted on going out after he found Vegeta pacing their hotel room suite in hopes that pacing would somehow speed up Raditz’s report form Earth. Tea of course triggers an… odd sensation for him, but Vegeta figured that vivid recollections of killing the girl were better than the one he had been having about Kakarot’s existence being as false as her monkey tail, so he went. He received Raditz’s report while drinking nothing and, well… Kakarot’s tail had stopped mattering very soon after.

“Market planet?” Krillin asks once he realizes that Vegeta has no desire to explain on his own. “Is that kinda like a top-heavy but for… markets?”

As stupid as that sounds, Krillin’s not exactly wrong. Vegeta tells him as much.

“Oh,” the monk replies, worrying his fingers around his cup of water. He looks down at it. “Were-were they just used for transporting goods? You know, not too many people on them like those top-heavy ones?”

Vegeta swallows the bite he took and says, “Are you kidding? You can’t even move half the time on one of those fucking things. Too many stalls everywhere.”

Krillin brightens right up. “You mean that there’s an entire planets of just  _ stores _ ?”

Vegeta waves him off. “Stores, restaurants, hotels… whatever else you can spend money on. Drugs. Assassins. Whores.” The rich and powerful had entire continents to themselves. The Cold family? Entire hemispheres. Market planets where planets of excess. Vegeta hated them.

“How many of these are in the Empire you think?”

“Dozen. Dunno.” When Vegeta realizes that Krillin’s still on the edge of his seat, he awkwardly adds, “They’re spread out?” He’s annoyed that he feels the need to add anything at all.

Meanwhile, Krillin might as well have stars in his eyes. “Have you ever been to any other ones? Other than the one you mentioned?”

“No.” He actually has. Once. He doesn’t want to talk about it. He takes a huge bite of his sandwich instead.

Thankfully, its calming effect makes him not want to throw Krillin across the room when he either doesn’t notice or flat out ignores the tenseness in his voice. Krillin barrels through. “Are there any other planets with specifications like that? Like, like… I dunno… factory planets?”

“... That was pretty much every other planet, yeah.”

You see, in order for a Planet Trade Organization to even exist, you had to trade planets for… something. This “something” was usually the planet’s resources. Some companies need, say, iron while others need seeds and others need manpower, and the government facilitated these trades as well as owned the merchandise before it ever went to market. Of course, being the dictatorship that it is, the government can take back these planets whenever  _ they  _ needed the resources, but that’s neither here nor there. If the planet proved valuable enough, it could be mined for millennia. Minerals, food, and warriors were the three favored long term excavations, but Vegeta had visited a planet invaded for its knowledge once. That’d been a trip. 

“Its knowledge?” Krillin asks. “What kinda knowledge exactly?” 

Vegeta shrugs. It’s becoming a trend. “Who knows? My father conquered it back when he went on the crusades.” 

As mentioned previously, Saiyan princes needed to be blood-wetted, and Vegeta’s father had been no exception. It was only five or six years after the Saiyan genocide that Vegeta learned his father had travelled off-planet. He had flown on a Saiyan warship and taken six planets on the southern starboard, but during that time, Vegeta’s grandfather had died unexpectedly, and King Vegeta had been forced to return home to rule. Many years later, our Vegeta had been sent there on business, but he could not help but wonder what a planet full of knowledge could possibly know about his race. That had been the first of five times he had met the oracle. You know, the one he brutally blinded, killed, and then killed again. Still, that’s a story for another time. 

“Of those six planets,” Krillin asks, “how many are still there?”

Vegeta doesn’t know the number, but he does know the likelihood. “Two. One. Who cares?”

Krillin does, but he’s in no mood for a fight, so he changes the subject. “Any planets with weird geography?” he asks. “That you didn’t destroy,” he clarifies quickly.

Geography? The word translates as “geometry” for a second, and Vegeta’s really freaking confused, but he figures it out. “Trees,” he replies. That’s a geography, right?

“Trees?”

Or not. He nods anyway.

You see, back when Frieza was still unsure about sending Vegeta anywhere heavily inhabited, Vegeta and his two subjects received an odd request. Despite Galaxy 186 having been in the Empire for almost a millennium, one planet had yet to be conquered. 186 had had all sorts of rebel problems, so when the survey team scanned Planet X2KB and determined it uninhabited, the Empire focused more on bug squashing than peaceful exploration. The Empire always needed more wood though, so once the planet was surveyed for a second time, Frieza sent the three Saiyans there to secure it. Vegeta had been insulted about this, of course, because how could he properly secure something if he couldn’t punch it, but he went because he had to. 

Once they arrived though, Vegeta figured out the problem. The planet was, quite literally, covered in trees. Tall trees. The tallest trees Vegeta had ever seen. So tall that their branches reached up into the atmosphere and their canopies blanketed the ground below in a fogged darkness. The trees were also so strong that, when they tried to crash their pods into said trees, their pods did not win. In fact, the trunks might as well have been made of cement because the impact crushed the pods beyond recognition. Thankfully, a reconnaissance ship was only 12 hours away, but it was the principal of the thing, you know? Anyway, there were no bodies of water. Not that Vegeta could find anyway, but it did rain. It rained hard for thirty minutes to an hour at a time and, due to the humidity, the three could see the rainwater condensating and returning to the air only to be dumped back down again thirty minutes later. No fauna either. No other flora. Just trees. The same exact trees. A scientist on that market planet in Sector 4 later told him, based off a branch sample, that the tree he got it from must have been millions of years old. 

Up until this point, Vegeta had felt small, of course. He was short for his age, short for his race, and had developed quite the complex about it. Never had he felt  _ that  _ small though. That insignificant. Even during the nights where he’d lie in bed and imagine going from Saiyan to hot matter to nothing, he still felt like he was a part of something. Not there, though. Not on that planet.

Half a day later, the reconnaissance ship arrived, and Vegeta did something none of those trees would ever be able to do. Leave. Once he realized that, he realized he could do anything. 

That… hasn’t exactly worked out for him, mind you, but still. The sentiment counts.

“And… that planet still exists?” Krillin asks. “Really?” 

Vegeta nods, taking a sip of his cider. Frieza had always been a fan of the extremely odd. He probably built a summer villa there or something. Or cleared it into one giant field because Frieza would do something that for shits and giggles. Who knows? If Vegeta had spent any time trying to figure out how Frieza’s mind works, he’d of gone insane a long time go. From what he remembers though, the planet is still there. He hasn’t been back to 186 in a long time.

“Wow,” Krillin says. “That’s amazing.”

Vegeta keeps chewing as a reply.

In fact, he’s almost through his third sandwich when Krillin asks, suddenly out of the blue, “It took you a year to get here, right? An Earth year?” 

Vegeta’s not sure how much he wants to promote multiple questions being asked in one session, but he figures this is close enough to the original to warrant a response, especially when the response is a very uninterested nod. 

“And… the ship Bulma’s dad built for you, did that… did that take you back there? To the Empire, I mean…” 

Vegeta swallows and says, “Are you nuts? Of course not!” Vegeta wanted to rule the whole thing for a while there, of course, but now that Cooler’s most likely in charge, the Empire’s more dangerous than ever. As previously mentioned, Cooler’s probably happy about the way things turned out, but if one of the Saiyans who killed his family stepped into his domain, he’d be forced to take action. Regicide cannot be taken lightly even if you’re thankful for it. You don’t want to give others any… unnecessary ideas. Needless to say, Vegeta will likely never step foot in the Empire again.

Krillin gives Vegeta a look. “Where did you go then?”

To a planet. Vegeta doesn’t remember the specifics other than the fact that it was blue and there was lots of lightning. He knew that, while Namek had been more of a teal, there sure was a lot of lightning around when he saw Kakarot as a Super Saiyan for that brief couple of seconds, so he figured the planet would fit the whole transformation aesthetic. It didn’t. A lot of things Vegeta remembers from those couple of seconds didn’t work, but he’s figure out how Kakarot fulfilled the legend or die trying.

He doesn’t realize the answer is currently sitting across from him sipping some water. The answer is also waiting on an answer to his question.

Vegeta gives it. “A place where I wouldn’t be disturbed. Why do you care?”

Krillin shrugs. “I dunno,” he replies. “I guess I was just wondering if you think a ship like that could get to the Empire just as quickly. I know your pod thing was smaller and probably faster, so…”

Vegeta laughs. He can’t help it. “What? You wanting to take a vacation or something?”

Krillin blushes hard. “Not… not, not, not a  _ vacation  _ exactly.” 

“Then what?”

Krillin looks down at his glass of water and, with his right hand, revolves it around very slowly. “I’m just, you know… considering my options.” 

In all technicality, Vegeta could ask about this. Vegeta could ask why Krillin feels the need to consider options an Earth year away in an empire whose previous ruler literally  _ killed him. _ He could ask why Krillin isn’t at fucking Kakarot’s house like he’s supposed to be, and why he’s taken to squatting at Capsule Corps, but he won’t. That’s because Vegeta’s an asshole, and Vegeta doesn’t care. The important thing to take note of though is that, even though Vegeta  _ could  _ ask about it, that doesn’t mean he’d get an answer. That doesn’t mean that Krillin would spill his guts all over the table like Vegeta might if Krillin gets too used to him. They’re already getting what they want out of the arrangement, after all: Vegeta, sandwiches; Krillin, companionship. There’s no need to dirty the table. They’re both in agreement about that.

Instead Vegeta says, while chewing, “Outta the question.”

Krillin looks up from his glass. “Huh? Why?” 

Vegeta gestures to emphasize the full sandwich in his hand. “You’re supposed t’be making these for me, remember? Have you forgotten already or something?” 

For a moment, Krillin looks at him like he’s crazy, but then gives the most sickeningly sweet smile Vegeta has ever seen. “Sorry, you’re right,” he says. “Silly me.” 

Desperate to not turn this into a ‘moment’ or whatever humans call it it, Vegeta continues with, “And anyway, you’re at least ‘free’ or whatever here, right? You wanna go onto a dictator’s ship just because there’s some planets with some stores?”

Krillin can’t help but laugh at how poorly Vegeta’s language trip translated that out. “Onto a dictator’s ship, huh?” 

Vegeta looks unsure for a moment while chewing. “That’s what they call it, right?” he asks, mouth full. “A dictator’s ship?”

“A dictatorship, yes.” 

“Yeah, don’t get on that.”

Krillin laughs. “Yeah, okay, Vegeta.” 

Vegeta’s not sure why he’s laughing, but it doesn’t matter. He has sandwiches to eat, and Krillin shouldn’t interrupt that too much. Krillin tries his best.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Sponsor:** The following chapter is brought to you by an ad agency's nightmare. An ad agency's nightmare: I can't think of shit.


	13. THE DEFINITION OF TERRIBLE

THE DEFINITION OF TERRIBLE

 

They don’t convene for dinner that evening, but come morning, they’re right back at it. You see, when Vegeta enters the kitchen at half past seven, he figures things can’t get stranger – a thought he’s often regretted having over the course of his life, mind you, but still manages to have on a consistent basis.

At the moment though, he’s right. The sandwiches are already made and stacked in their usual manner, and while Krillin is reading that ridiculously-sized paper again, he no longer seems as eager to run out on Earth as he was yesterday, so Vegeta’s as satisfied as he’ll ever be.

He shows this by immediately digging in.

Krillin shoots him a glance, raises both his eyebrows, then goes back to his paper. “You, uh,” he says, “aren’t getting sick of those sandwiches yet, are you?” It’s more of a statement than a question.

Vegeta replies by giving him a look that, if not dampened by the sandwiches, might’ve killed.

While Krillin’s no longer seriously considering jet-setting out of the atmosphere, that doesn’t mean he’s in a good enough mood to entertain mediocre threats, so when he catches sight of Vegeta’s half-assed attempt at it, he says, “Alright then,” and goes back to reading as though it never happened. 

Thankfully, Vegeta too engaged in what he’s doing to notice.

There’s a minute or two of silence between them, and just as Vegeta wonders if they’re going to get through the morning without some ridiculous occurrence, Krillin says, “Man, this week’s been terrible for everyone, huh?” 

The question’s more directed to the ether than Vegeta, but he still considers it. Has this week really been so terrible? Well,  _ yeah.  _ God, yeah. Every moment spent on this godforsaken planet is the textbook fucking definition of terrible, so to Vegeta, this week being terrible is more the norm than the outlier Krillin’s making it out to be. 

However, Vegeta can’t help but feel like this week in particular has been a little… well,  _ less  _ terrible than usual. Confusing and emotionally taxing, sure, but the sandwiches have been a big plus. Also, Krillin… Krillin hasn’t been the worst thing to ever happen to him, he supposes. Vegeta can get behind anyone doing something to piss of Bulma, and he’s pretty sure squatting at her place is currently the frontrunner in that department, so props to that; and while he can be stupid to the point of risking Vegeta’s insanity, Krillin’s lapses into normalcy have been frequent enough to make him somehow tolerable.

So yeah, this week’s been terrible, no question, but for Vegeta, it could’ve been worse. What he’s more concerned about is how Krillin thinks his and everyone else’s week can even relate. Not that Vegeta cares. Of course not. We’ve been over this. No, this is more about the lengths to which Vegeta will go to consider himself the very best. If everyone, including Krillin, is really having that terrible of a week, well, they better settle for silver, because Vegeta only goes for gold, even in the cases where it makes him feel like shit.  

All this leads to him asking: “What could  _ possibly _ be so terrible?” 

Krillin grips the paper tighter, and after staring at Vegeta wide-eyed and sheet white for a moment, opens his mouth to ask if Vegeta means in general or what in particular. The ‘in general,’ Krillin can answer. He can answer  _ that _ for hours. It’s concerning how many problems come instantly to mind that have nothing to do with his own. He needs to get better about that, but does he really want to start by getting into the ‘in particular’ right now –  _ with Vegeta _ ? Well… 

Before Krillin’s able to ask and figure out whether he’ll be droning on for hours or immediately leaving though, Vegeta continues with, “Isn’t this planet is run on _ on _ on  _ sparkles  _ or something? You people don’t know the first thing about terrible  _ other than being terrible _ !” 

Oh, he’s talking about ‘in general’ then, Krillin thinks. Alright. “Well, I doubt you’ve heard, but there was an assassination attempt on our president a few days ago,” he says. He slaps the paper with the back of one of his hand. “It’s been all over the paper. They haven’t caught the guy yet, so everyone’s really on edge.” 

Vegeta scoffs. “Like I said, you’re all terrible. None of you can kill one lousy dog, and the people protectin’ him can’t even catch the guy who tried it! Pathetic!”

“Well, yeah, but I’m sure it’s a little more complicated than–” 

Krillin looks hard down at the table for a moment, then looks back up at Vegeta as though he just casually proved string theory. “Wait. How did you know our president’s a dog?”

“... The president’s a dog?”

“Yes.”

Vegeta downs his entire mug of apple cider as though it’s hard alcohol. His chip had told him that the word ‘dog’ is a colloquialism for a piece of shit human being. He hadn’t actually meant the animal, but apparently he  _ did _ , because the president of this goddamn planet is a fucking dog! You know, for someone who’s only been outside  _ once _ since learning about his own death by robot, Vegeta sure has learned a lot about the fauna here. Pigs are disgusting but delicious; a turtle somehow taught Kakarot martial arts; and apparently a dog can be president. Thing is, Vegeta definitely saw a servant picking up poodle shit during his second morning here, which makes him think that some servant must pick up the poop of this planet’s president, and –

No. No, you know what? Vegeta  _ has  _ had just as terrible a week as he usually does. He’s just not willing to rage as hard about it. He doesn’t know  _ why  _ he’s not willing to until he takes another bite of his sandwich on instinct. He’s really going to have to keep eating these if he wants to be patient like that oracle said, huh? Krillin’s gotta ask him questions to keep making ‘em, right? Right now, Vegeta’s willing to answer just about anything.

Thankfully, the line of questioning involves death, his favorite. “So, uh… I know your father was by all technically killed,” Krillin says, starting to fold up his paper, “but were there ever any attempts on his life? Or-or on yours, perhaps?” 

Vegeta’s about to tell Krillin just how obvious that fucking question is, but the monk clarifies with, “For political reasons, I mean. Not for, you know…” He puts the paper down underneath his phone. “... revenge for state, family, and/or home.” 

“What difference is there?” 

Krillin raises an eyebrow. “Difference between what?”

“Murder and assassination.” 

“Ah. Well, good question.” Krillin clicks his tongue as he thinks. “If we wanna go off dictionary definitions, I suppose murder’s the, uh… unlawful killing of a person – sometimes premeditated, sometimes not – while with an assassination, the victim’s always a person of significance who’s killed not outta passion, but for, like, political reasons?” 

“Then my father  _ was  _ assassinated.” 

Krillin’s shoulders slump a little. “... Oh, right. I forgot. He wasn’t planetside when Frieza… you know.” 

“Destroyed it,” Vegeta says. “No, he wasn’t.” 

“Still though, I…” Krillin folds his hands as he puts them on the table. “I would hesitate to call your father’s death an assassination.” 

“What? Why?” 

“Well, like I said. Assassinations are usually pulled off for political reasons. Frieza had no political gain from killing your father. It was more due to… species discrimination, I guess? I mean, your father’s death was the first in a genocide, not in a coup or any sort of new world order. Also, assassinations are usually pulled off either by hiring a trained profession or someone of a lower class than their target. In this case, well… it’s complicated, that’s for sure. There’s lots of… facets?”

“Facets?” 

“Yeah.”

“Like what?”

Krillin shrugs in that certain way that notes contemplation rather than indecision or confusion. “Well, even though your father’s death wasn’t an assassination, due to your father’s and Frieza’s positions, his death would’ve garnered a lot of different interpretations. I mean, I only know what Frieza told us, but based off that, I’m sure the Empire chalked up King Vegeta’s death to self defense.”

Vegeta’s surprised enough by this statement to drop his sandwich entirely. It lands with the kind of splat one would expect of a rubber goose. “Self  _ defense _ ?” 

Krillin shrugs again, but this time much quicker and more definitively. “Yeah. I mean, Vegeta? Your father brought an elite squad onto Frieza’s ship with the intent to  _ kill  _ him. A good deal of people would say that  _ he  _ was attempting to assassinate Frieza, not the other way around.” 

This time, Vegeta’s expression is not dampened by the sandwiches. 

Krillin sees this and immediately backpedals. “But-but-but _ but _ but, like I said before, that’s probably the way the, uh, Empire sees it. Lots of interpretations could be made, though, like I said.  _ A lot  _ a lot.” He tries to think of one that  _ won’t  _ get him killed. He manages it pretty quickly. “I mean, again, due to Frieza’s, uh… obvious bias against Saiyans, he could’ve purposefully, you know... pushed your father to the point where he’d behave in a way that would justify not only his death, but a total eradication of the Saiyan race?”

Vegeta narrows his eyes a bit. “So you’re saying Frieza purposefully allowed my father to invade his ship so he’d have an excuse to destroy my entire planet?”

“... yes?”

They don’t break eye contact for a moment, but Vegeta finally looks down to pick his sandwich back up. “Bastard,” he mutters just before taking his next bite.

Krillin heaves a sigh of relief. “An-Anyway, your father’s… fate notwithstanding, were there any other attempts on his life that you know of? Again,” (he still feels the need to add), “for political reasons?”

Vegeta swallows while he thinks. “Not my father, no,” he replies. “Not by another Saiyan, anyway. No foreigners either, from what I know.” 

“Speaking of that, did any other races live on Planet Vegeta or was it just Saiyans?” 

“Just Saiyans.” 

While most planets in the Empire were required to open their atmosphere to anyone required to be there, Planet Vegeta was a particular case. You see, many years back when King Cold was still heavily involved in the crusading, he didn’t have the same kind of leverage he does now. (Or did until, you know, he was blown to a million pieces just a few weeks back). No, back then when he took a planet into his fold, he still had to… negotiate. Planet Vegeta was quite a missile to be placed in his arsenal, so to speak, for a multitude of reasons, and as such, during his negotiations with King Vegeta XV of Tribe Un Ookairani, it had been agreed, as a part of Planet Vegeta’s surrender, that no foreigner should be allowed to touch soil unless it was for imperial business, and that imperial business should be conducted, at all times, within the capital’s castle. Of course, there were a few exceptions to this rule (a certain cat god comes to mind), but overall, it was generally well followed, even by Frieza and his family surprisingly enough. 

Cold negotiated with a number of planets over the years before instilling his sons as conquerors, but not many of those planets survived in the long term, at least not in the same capacity as they were when Cold first stepped foot on them. By the time our Prince Vegeta was born, his planet had become an exception to the rule rather than an example of it. It was such an exception that, even after its destruction, the phrase ‘as level as Planet Vegeta’ is used by the Empire’s citizens to describe when everything’s uniform. ‘How are those Lord Frieza bobble heads looking, Frank? No obvious difference between ‘em, right?’ ‘They’re all as level as Planet Vegeta, sir!’ ‘Perfect! Send ‘em to every gift shop in the Empire then!’ (This conversation most likely happened since there are, in fact, Frieza bobble heads in every gift shop in the Empire; however, the subordinate was probably not named Frank). 

Anyway, despite living on a completely homogeneous planet, Saiyans were used to other races. Not many Saiyans spent their entire life on their home planet, after all. In fact, a good number of them never even stepped foot on it, which caused some complications when it came to Frieza’s extermination plan, but more on that another time. No, if anything, being surrounded by Saiyans and  _ only  _ Saiyans was disconcerting to most of the population, but still, their homogeneity was a matter of Saiyan pride, so they tended to brag about it. A lot. 

Needless to say, because of all this, it would be difficult for a person of another species to assassinate King Vegeta, especially seeing that, once he was crowned, King Vegeta never left the planet’s orbit again until he, you know… he  _ did.  _ It didn’t work out.

“Huh,” Krillin says. “People really did respect that whole equivalent exchange duel, huh?”

“They wouldn’t be Saiyan if they didn’t,” Vegeta replies.

“I see…”

Vegeta’s not sure what gets into him, but before he can stop himself, he says, “‘Course, the honorable duel of equivalent exchange didn’t apply for within Tribes.”

Krillin cocks his head a little. “What do you mean?”

Vegeta  _ knows  _ what he means, but he doesn’t know why he means it. Vegeta might as well have the social grace of a mean girl not wearing pink on a Wednesday, but even he can spot the natural end to a conversation. He could’ve had it. It had been so close. Oh well, he thinks. There’s four sandwiches left. “People within other tribes assassinated each other all the time to gain political power.” 

“Really? I’m… surprised. That doesn’t seem very…”

“Honorable?” Vegeta replies. “No. It wasn’t, but Cold specifically banned the honorable duel, so it didn’t leave many options. If Tribes had remained at the same place in the totem pole for years at a time, something would’ve exploded, guaranteed. Better that way.” 

“I guess that makes sense,” Krillin says. “I mean, in a lot of ways, your dad was just a figurehe--”

Krillin’s smart enough to catch himself. He’s not sure why any mention of Vegeta’s father is making him constantly put his own foot in his mouth, but it needs to stop. Immediately.

Thankfully, Vegeta’s chip doesn’t fill the blanks. Vegeta, though, is aware that some sort of miscommunication has occurred. “No,” he says slowly, “my father was not a… plastic sculpture.”

Krillin’s red in the face when he laughs. “Sorry, wrong word.” He boinks himself on the head with his fist. “Stupid me! Heh.” 

At least he’s aware, Vegeta thinks, taking another bite.

“I guess you answered one part of my question,” Krillin says, eager to steer the conversation elsewhere, “but not the other. Has anyone ever attempted to, you know…” 

Vegeta probably gives to the most dramatic sigh Krillin has ever heard out of him. It almost levels with Bulma’s brand of them, and Krillin’s impressed. “Once,” he replies.

There were probably others ( _ definitely  _ others, Vegeta’s ego jumps in), but he’s only really aware of one particular attempt. He had been young, but not young enough to have still been living on Planet Vegeta. Not to say Planet Vegeta would’ve given him the immunity you’d naturally expected. The honorable duel of equivalent exchange does not apply to heir apparents; in fact, many in line for the throne had been killed over the years to make way for a better king. Prince Vegeta, though, was different – Untrodden. From birth, he was destined to rule, which, you’re right, does seem like a peculiar thing to explain when the previous clause was, in fact, the definition of “heir apparent” _.  _ We’ll discuss the distinction another time.

Anyway, the assassination attempt occurred in that awkward stage of Vegeta’s life where he was no longer confined to Frieza’s warship 24/7, but he still had to return to it anytime he completed a task. Any task. In fact, despite living with the guy for a number of years, Vegeta never realized how much of a troll Frieza was until this one time he was helping clear out a planet, and Frieza required Vegeta to tell him whenever he killed someone. Anyone. Frieza was fairly close by for the whole thing, sure, but Vegeta was the only one required to do this and it made no fucking sense. As this continued, of course, Vegeta figured Frieza was trying to make a fool of him, but when one of the other elites pointed out the joke, Frieza killed him, so who fucking knows. If Vegeta analyzed any of Frieza’s actions, he’d go insane. God, he’s glad Frieza’s dead.

_ Anyway _ , the attempt occurred while Vegeta was being kept on a very short leash. At that time, he might as well have been apart of Frieza’s main entourage, as much as the idea makes Vegeta physically ill, but that wasn’t the reason he was targeted. 

No, Vegeta was targeted because this asshole thought drinking Saiyan blood would help him overthrow the Empire.

“He thought  _ what? _ ” Krillin asks, having almost taken a sip of his coffee before hearing this.

“You’re not deaf,” Vegeta replies.

Krillin wonders if this is just another insult or actually the nicest thing Vegeta’s ever said to anyone. Either way is pretty sad when you think about it, though. “... No, I’m not,” he says, “but recently I’ve realized, when I hear something this ridiculous, I need to ask for clarification.” 

Vegeta’s need for the gold just keeps getting pettier. “Doubt you’ve heard something this ridiculous before.” 

“After the week I’ve had,” Krillin says, “this is mid-tier.” 

Vegeta takes a grouchy bite of his sandwich in reply. Unlike the prince, who saw a natural close to the conversation earlier but blurted out a continuation without thinking, Krillin sees the natural close he accidentally created and tries to resurrect it. “But why did this guy think that Saiyan blood would help him kill the Colds? That makes no sense.” He then gives Vegeta a skeptical look. “D-Does it…?”

If you’re horribly misinformed about the Gut Blood, then yes, perhaps it does make sense, but Vegeta’s just as adamant about not explaining that as he was the other day. It doesn’t matter anyway because Vegeta’s sure that, while the assassination attempt had to do with blood, it most definitely involved  _ Saiyan  _ blood, not the Gut Blood. “No,” he replies. “Of course it doesn’t make sense. Why would it be ridiculous otherwise?”

“Well…” Krillin says slowly, “I would like to think the act of drinking someone else’s blood is  _ always  _ ridiculous, whether it gives you power or not.” 

… This is exactly the reason Vegeta does not want to discuss the Gut Blood.

So he ignores the comment because, now that he’s remembering all the details of the assassination attempt, he really wants to bitch about it. “ _ The point is, _ ” Vegeta stresses, “this idiot thought if he drank the blood of a Saiyan prince, it would give him the ability to turn ape and,” (Vegeta downright cringing as he says it) , “destroy all his enemies.” 

“That’s… oddly specific,” Krillin says. “Was this some sorta rumor or...?”

Not that Vegeta knows of. He actually looked into it a bit when he visited that knowledge planet, but nothing in their records supported the theory. Nappa and Raditz were just as dumbfounded by it, and for someone who feared the Saiyans enough to nearly exterminate every single one of them, Frieza was surprisingly unconcerned. WIth the knowledge Vegeta is armed with now, he’s almost positive that, if the theory had any merit, Frieza would’ve just killed the three of them and just been done with it. You can never train a Saiyan to keep blood in their body. Bleeding’s in their DNA.

The attempt happened on Frieza’s warship. They were near Homeworld, Vegeta remembers, and Frieza was using the opportunity to entertain one of the Five Lords of the Intersector. These were the five families whom Cold had made a pact with to create his Empire in the first place, and though Cold was much stronger than all these men and had proven himself time and time again of being untrustworthy, he had upheld this contract and brought these men and their planets unspeakable wealth. Interactions with these five lords were one of the only times in which Vegeta ever saw Frieza try to be respectful, and honestly, it was hilarious. Vegeta had to be  _ extra  _ respectful, of course, but it hadn’t been nearly as hard for him since he  _ did  _ respect these men in a weird sort of way. As much as Vegeta could respect anyone, anyway. Anyone who made Frieza think about what he actually said or did was a-okay in Vegeta’s book.

This had been the second time Frieza had invited one of the lords onboard since Vegeta’s ‘relocation,’ and hilariously enough, after experiencing an entirely  _ different  _ assassination attempt _ ,  _ this particular lord had hired an off-planet bodyguard elite, which was headed up by the asshole that would, on this day, attempt to assassinate Vegeta. 

Alright, so there Vegeta was, minding his own business. Despite the fact that he only ruled over two (known) subjects, Vegeta was still royalty, and as such forced to endure the dinner Frieza had invited the lord to, so he was minding his own business specifically at the dinner table. He forgets what they were discussing because he wasn’t allowed to participate, but it had been important enough that the servants had been shooed out into the hall as soon as the main course was served. He had taken to stabbing his food, a table faux pas he knew Zarbon hated and as such employed as much as possible. 

It is because of all of these things that Vegeta ended up alone with the asshole captain of the bodyguard. Because Vegeta does not remember the exact wording of this conversation, we will be using his childhood interpretation as our transcript of the event:

**“THE ROYAL SHIT”**

by Vegeta’s childhood grudges

FADE IN:

INT. LORD FRIEZA’S FORMAL DINING ROOM - DINNERTIME

**LORD:** Blah blah. I am a very important lord, and I know I am on my so-called partner’s spoiled brat’s ship, but I am still terribly afraid from that assassination attempt, so I must have two of my bodyguards go locate the loo before I go take a royal shit.

**FRIEZA:** Oh yes. I have taken many a royal shit on this ship. Here, let one of my thousands of servants help you locate this holy place. 

**FRIEZA:** But oh no!  We are alone, so it is now impossible for us to do accomplish this incredibly minor task. Whatever shall we do?

**ZARBON:** Lord Frieza, Prince Vegeta is annoying me terribly and doing an incredible job of it. The only way I could possibly defeat such a brilliant tactician is to volunteer him to do this horrible task.

**FRIEZA:** Your asskissing pleases me, Zarbon. Vegeta, do the work of a servant and show other servants where the bathroom is so that this lord I am required to please can take his royal shit.

**ASSHOLE CAPTAIN:** I am now going to unsuspiciously insist that I should unsuspiciously accompany the great prince to this holy chamber of enchantment unsuspiciously.

**LORD:** … Fine. Unsuspiciously get on with it then.

FADE OUT.

THE END

(If you couldn’t tell, Vegeta’s still very bitter over the whole thing).

That is how Prince Vegeta found himself in a vacant hallway with the man who was about to take his life. Vegeta was a few steps ahead of him and was about to turn that last corner to show him the door when he felt… something. For many years, he had assumed it was the heat of the captain’s  _ ki _ , but now that he can sense most  _ ki  _ at will, he realizes that the ability had laid dormant in him for quite some time. Not that the beam would’ve done shit to him, but we’ll get to that in a moment.

The altercation went like this: Vegeta turns around to find that the captain of one of the Five Lord’s bodyguards apparently trying to kill him. Due to the captain status, Vegeta assumes he will not win in a fight with said captain. Meanwhile, captain starts blabbering about how the Saiyans conquered his planet, but he had seen one of his brothers drink the blood of a fallen Saiyan and turn into an ape during the ensuing battle, and how this brother was unstoppable; thus, if the captain drinks a royal Saiyan’s blood, he will be more than unstoppable. 

It is at that moment that the captain insists that he will, in fact, become the legendary Super Saiyan.

Vegeta takes exception to this.

Vegeta takes so much exception to this that, when the captain fires the shot, he doesn’t get out of the way. Instead, little Vegeta stands his ground and faces the blast that should’ve killed him head-on. He’s seeing red and not thinking, and the next thing he knows, he’s punching the  _ ki.  _ He punches it perfectly. So perfectly, in fact, that the shot ricochets off his knuckles and right up into the captain’s very surprised face.

The captain’s head explodes, and there’s blood  _ everywhere. _

“Oh my god,” Krillin says. “What is up with you and heads?!”

“What? Nothing!”

“Nothing? You told me yesterday that you punched a Saiberman’s head off--”

“I did?” Vegeta asks. Must of been the concussion, the demons provide. “Oh.”

“And there was that whole thing with the Ginyu Force guy on Namek--”

“Guldo?” Vegeta asks.

“Sure. And now  _ this? _ ” Krillin sits back in his chair, looking thoroughly stumped. “So you were just sitting there, in a hallway, covered in blood?”

Yes. Yes, he was. Vegeta had killed a lot of people in his life up ‘til this point, so he was certainly used to it, but even he had been a little rattled. Then he was mostly just annoyed because he got asshole blood all over his traditional armor. 

“And no one… no one  _ questioned  _ this?” Krillin asks.

“Are you kidding?” Vegeta says. “Frieza was almost as paranoid as his father. There were cameras everywhere on that ship. Captured the whole thing.” 

In fact, the footage became a ship-wide phenomenon there for a while. Someone was able to edit it down to a six-second clip of blast-to-fist-to-face and loop it so people could watch it as many times as they wanted in a row. Vegeta’s pretty sure that person ended up making an empirical cloud site based off the concept, though he never used it. Raditz got the biggest kick out of it, which was kind of surprising seeing the company they were forced to keep, to the point where he attempted to do the same thing several times. It never worked out for him. The one time he did manage to hit someone back right in their face, the blast just… sorta went through their head. Raditz had been terribly disappointed.

“Okay,” Krillin says. “Now that I have all the information I need, I, uh… I move that ridiculous statement from earlier to upper mid-tier.”

Vegeta’s nearly done with his sandwiches at this point, but he can’t help but feel like his time is being cut short by the way Krillin gets out of his chair and starts gathering his stuff. “Upper mid-tier?” he asks. “Some asshole tried to assassinate me so he could drink my blood and become a Super Saiyan-ape god thing. I punched the blast meant for my head into his head, and it exploded.”

“Yes,” Krillin says, hugging the newspaper to his chest, phone clutched in hand, “I understand that.”

“You’ve heard more ridiculous than  _ that  _ this week?” 

“Believe me,” Krillin replies, “I’m just as confused and morally conflicted about that as you are, but like I said – it’s been a terrible week.” He smiles after though. “See you at lunch?” he asks.

Vegeta grunts, last fourth of a sandwich in hand. 

Krillin leaves as Vegeta shoves it in his mouth, chews, and swallows. Just like that, everything’s back to the way it’s supposed to be – terrible – and Vegeta’s once again going for the gold.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **SPONSOR:** This chapter is brought to you by DNA. DNA: Is yours mutated, baby, because you sure have evolved.


End file.
